THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


m 


of 


AUTHOR   OF   "  WILD   LIFE   NEAR   HOME  "   AND 
"  ROOF   AND   MEADOW  " 


BOSTON    AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 


1908 


COPYRIGHT    1908    BY    DALLAS   LORE   SHARP 
ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  September  iqo8 


< \  ^ 

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tfyt  QUemor^  of 

(mormon,  (TTl.  ©. 


ivia517S7 


Confente 

I.   The  Muskrats  are  Building  I 

II.    Christmas  in  the  Woods     ....  19 

III.  A  Cure  for  Winter         .         .         .         .  .     3S 

IV.  The  Nature-Student            .       ".         .         .  56 
V.    Chickadee      .        .        .        .        .        ,  74 

VI.    The  Missing  Tooth    .....  89 

VII.   The  Sign  of  the  Shad-bush     ...  .105 

VIII.   The  Nature  Movement       .         .         .         .  n4 

IX.   June      .         /        ..        .         .         ,         .  .  I27 

X.   A  Broken  Feather      .        .        .        .        .  137 

XI.    High  Noon    .         .         .^      .         .         .  .   148 

XII.    The  Palace  in  the  Pig-pen          .         .        .  161 

XIII.  An  Account  with  Nature        .         .         .  .   175 

XIV.  The  Buzzard  of  the  Bear  Swamp        .         .  189 
XV.   The  Lay  of  the  Land 200 


WE  have  had  a  series  of  long,  heavy  rains,  and  water 
is  standing  over  the  swampy  meadow.  It  is  a  dreary 
stretch,  this  wet,  sedgy  land  in  the  cold  twilight, 
drearier  than  any  part  of  the  woods  or  the  upland 
pastures.  They  are  empty,  but  the  meadow  is  flat 
and  wet,  naked  and  all  unsheltered.  And  a  Novem- 
ber night  is  falling. 

The  darkness  deepens.  A  raw  wind  is  rising.  At 
nine  o'clock  the  moon  swings  round  and  full  to  the 
crest  of  the  ridge,  and  pours  softly  over.  I  button  the 
heavy  ulster  close,  and  in  my  rubber  boots  go  down 
to  the  river  and  follow  it  out  to  the  middle  of  the 
meadow,  where  it  meets  the  main  ditch  at  the  sharp 
turn  toward  the  swamp.  Here  at  the  bend,  behind  a 
clump  of  black  alders,  I  sit  quietly  down  and  wait. 


of  t$ 

I  am  not  mad,  nor  melancholy ;  I  am  not  after 
copy.  Nothing  is  the  matter  with  me.  I  have  come 
out  to  the  bend  to  watch  the  muskrats  building,  for 
that  small  mound  up  the  ditch  is  not  an  old  haycock, 
but  a  half-finished  muskrat  house. 

The  moon  climbs  higher.  The  water  on  the  meadow 
shivers  in  the  light.  The  wind  bites  through  my 
heavy  coat  and  sends  me  back,  but  not  until  I  have 
seen  one,  two,  three  little  figures  scaling  the  walls  of 
the  house  with  loads  of  mud-and-reed  mortar.  I  am 
driven  back  by  the  cold,  but  not  until  I  know  that 
here  in  the  desolate  meadow  is  being  rounded  off  a 
lodge,  thick-walled  and  warm,  and  proof  against  the 
longest,  bitterest  of  winters. 

This  is  near  the  end  of  November.  My  wood  is  in 
the  cellar ;  I  am  about  ready  to  put  on  the  double 
windows  and  storm  doors ;  and  the  muskrats'  house 
is  all  but  finished.  Winter  is  at  hand :  but  we  are 
prepared,  the  muskrats  even  better  prepared  than 
I,  for  theirs  is  an  adequate  house,  planned  per- 
fectly. 

Throughout  the  summer  they  had  no  house,  only 
their  tunnels  into  the  sides  of  the  ditch,  their  road- 
ways out  into  the  grass,  and  their  beds  under  the 


tussocks  or  among  the  roots  of  the  old  stumps.  All 
these  months  the  water  had  been  low  in  the  ditch, 
and  the  beds  among  the  tussocks  had  been  safe  and 
dry  enough. 

Now  the  autumnal  rains  have  filled  river  and  ditch, 
flooded  the  tunnels,  and  crept  up  into  the  beds  under 
the  tussocks.  Even  a  muskrat  will  creep-  out  of  his 
bed  when  cold,  wet  water  creeps  in.  What  shall  he  do 
for  a  house  ?  He  does  not  want  to  leave  his  meadow. 
The  only  thing  to  do  is  to  build,  —  move  from  under 
the  tussock,  out  upon  the  top,  and  here,  in  the  deep, 
wiry  grass,  make  a  new  bed,  high  and  dry  above  the 
rising  water,  and  close  the  new  bed  in  with  walls 
that  circle  and  dome  and  defy  the  winter. 

Such  a  house  will  require  a  great  deal  of  work  to 
build.  Why  not  combine,  make  it  big  enough  to  hold 
half  a  dozen,  save  labor  and  warmth,  and,  withal,  live 
sociably  together  ?  So  they  left,  each  one  his  bed, 

and  joining  efforts,  started,  about  the  middle  of  Octo- 

• 
ber,  to  build  this  winter  house. 

Slowly,  night  after  night,  the  domed  walls  have 
been  rising,  although  for  several  nights  at  a  time 
there  would  be  no  apparent  progress  with  the  work. 
The  builders  were  in  no  hurry,  it  seems ;  the  cold 

3 


of 

was  far  off ;  but  it  is  coming,  and  to-night  it  feels 
near  and  keen.  And  to-night  there  is  no  loafing  about 
the  lodge. 

When  this  house  is  done,  then  the  rains  may  de- 
scend, and  the  floods  come,  but  it  will  not  fall.  It  is 
built  upon  a  tussock ;  and  a  tussock,  you  will  know, 
who  have  ever  grubbed  at  one,  has  hold  on  the  bot- 
tom of  creation.  The  winter  may  descend,  and  the 
boys,  and  foxes,  come, — and  they  will  come,  but  not 
before  the  walls  are  frozen,  —  yet  the  house  stands. 
It  is  boy-proof,  almost ;  it  is  entirely  rain-,  cold-,  and 
fox-proof.  Many  a  time  I  have  hacked  at  its  walls 
with  my  axe  when  fishing  through  the  ice,  but  I  never 
got  in.  I  have  often  seen,  too,  where  the  fox  has  gone 
round  and  round  the  house  in  the  snow,  and  where, 
at  places,  he  has  attempted  to  dig  into  the  frozen 
mortar ;  but  it  was  a  foot  thick,  as  hard  as  flint,  and 
utterly  impossible  for  his  pick  and  shovel. 

Yet  strangely  enough  the  house  sometimes  fails  of 
the  very  purpose  for  which  it  was  erected.  I  said  the 
floods  may  come.  So  they  may,  ordinarily ;  but  along 
in  March  when  one  comes  as  a  freshet,  it  rises  some- 
times to  the  dome  of  the  house,  filling  the  single  bed- 
chamber and  drowning  the  dwellers  out.  I  remember 

4 


QEfuif bin$ 

a  freshet  once  in  the  end  of  February  that  flooded 
Lupton's  Pond  and  drove  the  muskrats  of  the  whole 
pond  village  to  their  ridgepoles,  to  the  bushes,  and 
to  whatever  wreckage  the  waters  brought  along. 

The  best  laid  schemes  o'  muskrats  too 
Gang  aft  a-gley. 

But  ganging  a-gley  is  not  the  interesting  thing,  not 
the  point  with  my  muskrats  :  it  is  rather  that  my 
muskrats,  and  the  mice  that  Burns  ploughed  up,  the 
birds  and  the  bees,  and  even  the  very  trees  of  the 
forest,  have  foresight.  They  all  look  ahead  and  pro- 
vide against  the  coming  cold.  That  a  mouse,  or  a 
muskrat,  or  even  a  bee,  should  occasionally  prove 
foresight  to  be  vain,  only  shows  that  the  life  of  the 
fields  is  very  human.  Such  foresight,  however,  oftener 
proves  entirely  adequate  for  the  winter,  dire  as  some 
of  the  emergencies  are  sure  to  be. 

The  north  wind  doth  blow, 
And  we  shall  have  snow, 
And  what  will  Robin  do  then, 
Poor  thing  ? 

And  what  will  Muskrat  do  ?  and  Chipmunk  ?  and 
Whitefoot  ?  and  little  Chickadee  ?  poor  things !  Never 
fear.  Robin  has  heard  the  trumpets  of  the  north  wind 

5 


of 

and  is  retreating  leisurely  toward  the  south,  wise 
thing !  Muskrat  is  building  a  warm  winter  lodge ; 
Chipmunk  has  already  dug  his  but  and  ben,  and  so 
far  down  under  the  stone  wall  that  a  month  of  zeros 
could  not  break  in  ;  Whitefoot,  the  woodmouse,  has 
stored  the  hollow  poplar  stub  full  of  acorns,  and  has 
turned  Robin's  deserted  nest,  near  by,  into  a  cosy 
house;  and  Chickadee,  dear  thing,  Nature  herself 
looks  after  him.  There  are  plenty  of  provisions  for 
the  hunting,  and  a  big  piece  of  suet  on  my  lilac  bush. 
His  clothes  are  warm,  and  he  will  hide  his  head  under 
his  wing  in  the  elm-tree  hole  when  the  north  wind 
doth  blow,  and  never  mind  the  weather. 

I  shall  not  mind  it  either,  not  so  much,  anyway, 
on  account  of  Chickadee.  He  lends  me  a  deal  of 
support.  So  do  Chipmunk,  Whitefoot,  and  Muskrat. 

This  lodge  of  my  muskrats  in  the  meadow  makes 
a  difference,  I  am  sure,  of  at  least  ten  degrees  in  the 
mean  temperature  of  my  winter.  How  can  the  out- 
of-doors  freeze  entirely  up  with  such  a  house  as  this 
at  the  middle  of  it  ?  For  in  this  house  is  life,  warm 
life,  —  and  fire.  On  the  coldest  day  I  can  look  out 
over  the  bleak  white  waste  to  where  the  house  shows, 
a  tiny  mound  in  the  snow,  and  I  can  see  the  fire  burn, 

6 


just  as  I  can  see  and  feel  the  glow  when  I  watch  the 
slender  blue  wraith  rise  into  the  still  air  from  the 
chimney  of  the  old  farmhouse  along  the  road  below. 
For  I  share  in  the  life  of  both  houses  ;  and  not  less 
in  the  life  of  the  mud  house  of  the  meadow,  because, 
instead  of  Swedes,  they  are  muskrats  who  live  there. 
I  can  share  the  existence  of  a  muskrat  ?  Easily.  I 
like  to  curl  up  with  the  three  or  four  of  them  in  that 
mud  house  and  there  spend  the  worst  days  of  the 
winter.  My  own  big  house  here  on  the  hilltop  is 
sometimes  cold.  And  the  wind !  If  sometimes  I  could 
only  drive  the  insistent  winter  wind  from  the  house 
corners  !  But  down  in  the  meadow  the  house  has  no 
corners ;  the  mud  walls  are  thick,  so  thick  and  round 
that  the  shrieking  wind  sweeps  past  unheard,  and  all 
unheeded  the  cold  creeps  over  and  over  the  thatch, 
then  crawls  back  and  stiffens  upon  the  meadow. 

The  doors  of  our  house  in  the  meadow  swing  open 
the  winter  through.  Just  outside  the  doors  stand  our 
stacks  of  fresh  calamus  roots,  and  iris,  and  arum.  The 
roof  of  the  universe  has  settled  close  and  hard  upon 
us,  —  a  sheet  of  ice  extending  from  the  ridge  of  the 
house  far  out  to  the  shores  of  the  meadow.  The  win- 
ter is  all  above  the  roof — outside.  It  blows  and  snows 

7 


of 

and  freezes  out  there.  In  here,  beneath  the  ice-roof, 
the  roots  of  the  sedges  are  pink  and  tender ;  our  roads 
are  all  open  and  they  run  every  way,  over  all  the  rich, 
rooty  meadow. 

The  muskrats  are  building.  Winter  is  coming.  The 
muskrats  are  making  preparations,  but  not  they  alone. 
The  preparation  for  hard  weather  is  to  be  seen  every- 
where, and  it  has  been  going  on  ever  since  the  first 
flocking  of  the  swallows  back  in  July.  Up  to  that 
time  the  season  still  seemed  young ;  no  one  thought 
of  harvest,  of  winter ;  —  when  there  upon  the  tele- 
graph wires  one  day  were  the  swallows,  and  work 
against  the  winter  had  commenced. 

The  great  migratory  movements  of  the  birds,  mys- 
terious in  some  of  their  courses  as  the  currents  of 
the  sea,  were  in  the  beginning,  and  are  still,  for  the 
most  part,  mere  shifts  to  escape  the  cold.  Why  in 
the  spring  these  same  birds  should  leave  the  south- 
ern lands  of  plenty  and  travel  back  to  the  hungrier 
north  to  nest,  is  not  easily  explained.  Perhaps  it  is 
the  home  instinct  that  draws  them  back ;  for  home 
to  birds  (and  men)  is  the  land  of  the  nest.  However, 
it  is  very  certain  that  among  the  autumn  migrants 
there  would  be  at  once  a  great  falling  off  should  there 

8 


(ttlusfevafe  <m  QBuiCbing 


come  a  series  of  warm  open  winters  with  abundance 
of  food. 

Bad  as  the  weather  is,  there  are  a  few  of  the  seed- 
eating  birds,  like  the  quail,  and  some  of  the  insect- 
eaters,  like  the  chickadee,  who  are  so  well  provided 
for  that  they  can  stay  and  survive  the  winter.  But 
the  great  majority  of  the  birds,  because  they  have  no 
storehouse  nor  barn,  must  take  wing  and  fly  away 
from  the  lean  and  hungry  cold. 

And  I  am  glad  to  see  them  go.  The  thrilling  honk 
of  the  flying  wild  geese  out  of  the  November  sky 
tells  me  that  the  hollow  forests  and  closing  bays  of 
the  vast  desolate  north  are  empty  now,  except  for 
the  few  creatures  that  find  food  and  shelter  in  the 
snow.  The  wild  geese  pass,  and  I  hear  behind  them 
the  clang  of  the  arctic  gates,  the  boom  of  the  bolt  — 
then  the  long  frozen  silence.  Yet  it  is  not  for  long. 
Soon  the  bar  will  slip  back,  the  gates  will  swing  wide, 
and  the  wild  geese  will  come  honking  over,  swift  to 
the  greening  marshes  of  the  arctic  bays  once  more. 

Here  in  my  own  small  woods  and  marshes  there 
is  much  getting  ready,  much  comforting  assurance 
that  Nature  is  quite  equal  to  herself,  that  winter  is 
not  approaching  unawares.  There  will  be  great  lack, 

9 


of 

no  doubt,  before  there  is  plenty  again  ;  there  will  be 
suffering  and  death.  But  what  with  the  migrating, 
the  strange  deep  sleeping,  the  building  and  harvest- 
ing, there  will  be  also  much  comfortable,  much  joy- 
ous and  sociable  living. 

Long  before  the  muskrats  began  to  build,  even  be- 
fore the  swallows  commenced  to  flock,  my  chipmunks 
started  their  winter  stores.  I  don't  know  which  be- 
gan his  work  first,  which  kept  harder  at  it,  chipmunk 
or  the  provident  ant.  The  ant  has  come  by  a  reputa- 
tion for  thrift,  which,  though  entirely  deserved,  is 
still  not  the  exceptional  virtue  it  is  made  to  seem. 
Chipmunk  is  just  as  thrifty.  So  is  the  busy  bee.  It 
is  the  thought  of  approaching  winter  that  keeps  the 
bee  busy  far  beyond  her  summer  needs.  Much  of 
her  labor  is  entirely  for  the  winter.  By  the  first  of 
August  she  has  filled  the  brood  chamber  with  honey 
—  forty  pounds  of  it,  enough  for  the  hatching  bees 
and  for  the  whole  colony  until  the  willows  tassel 
again.  But  who  knows  what  the  winter  may  be  ? 
How  cold  and  long  drawn  out  into  the  coming  May  ? 
So  the  harvesting  is  pushed  with  vigor  on  to  the 
flowering  of  the  last  autumn  asters  —  on  until  fifty,  a 
hundred,  or  even  three  hundred  pounds  of  surplus 

10 


QEfutt bin$ 

honey  are  sealed  in  the  combs,  and  the  colony  is  safe 
should  the  sun  not  shine  again  for  a  year  and  a  day. 

But  here  is  Nature,  in  these  extra  pounds  of  honey, 
making  preparation  for  me,  incapable  drone  that  I 
am.  I  could  not  make  a  drop  of  honey  from  a  whole 
forest  of  linden  bloom.  Yet  I  must  live,  so  I  give 
the  bees  a  bigger  gum  log  than  they  need ;  I  build 
them  greater  barns ;  and  when  the  harvest  is  all 
in,  this  extra  store  I  make  my  own.  I  too  with  the 
others  am  getting  ready  for  the  cold. 

It  is  well  that  I  am.  The  last  of  the  asters  have 
long  since  gone;  so  have  the  witch-hazels.  All  is  quiet 
about  the  hives.  The  bees  have  formed  into  their 
warm  winter  clusters  upon  the  combs,  and  except 
"when  come  the  calm,  mild  days,"  they  will  fly  no 
more  until  March  or  April.  I  will  contract  their 
entrances, — put  on  their  storm-doors.  And  now 
there  is  little  else  that  I  can  do  but  put  on  my  own. 

The  whole  of  my  out-of-doors  is  a  great  hive, 
stored  and  sealed  for  the  winter,  its  swarming  life 
close-clustered,  and  covering  in  its  centre,  as  coals 
in  the  ashes,  the  warm  life-fires  of  summer. 

I  stand  along  the  edge  of  the  hillside  here  and 
look  down  the  length  of  its  frozen  slope.  The  brown 

ii 


of 

leaves  have  drifted  into  the  entrances,  as  if  every 
burrow  were  forsaken  ;  sand  and  sticks  have  washed 
in,  too,  littering  and  choking  the  doorways. 

There  is  no  sign  of  life.  A  stranger  would  find  it 
hard  to  believe  that  my  whole  drove  of  forty-six 
ground  hogs  (woodchucks)  are  gently  snoring  at  the 
bottoms  of  these  old  uninteresting  holes.  Yet  here 
they  are,  and  quite  out  of  danger,  sleeping  the  sleep 
of  the  furry,  the  fat,  and  the  forgetful. 

The  woodchuck's  is  a  curious  shift,  a  case  of  Na- 
ture outdoing  herself.  Winter  spreads  far  and  fast, 
and  Woodchuck,  in  order  to  keep  ahead  out  of  dan- 
ger, would  need  wings.  But  he  was  n't  given  any. 
Must  he  perish  then  ?  Winter  spreads  far,  but  does 
not  go  deep  —  down  only  about  four  feet ;  and  Wood- 
chuck,  if  he  cannot  escape  overland,  can,  perhaps, 
underlznd.  So  down  he  goes  through  the  winter, 
down  into  a  mild  and  even  temperature,  five  long 
feet  away  —  but  as  far  away  from  the  snow  and  cold 
as  Bobolink  among  the  reeds  of  the  distant  Orinoco. 

Indeed,  Woodchuck's  is  a  farther  journey  and  even 
more  wonderful  than  Bobolink's,  for  these  five  feet 
carry  him  beyond  the  bounds  of  time  and  space  into 
the  mysterious  realm  of  sleep,  of  suspended  life,  to 

12 


the  very  gates  of  death.  That  he  will  return  with 
Bobolink,  that  he  will  come  up  alive  with  the  spring 
out  of  this  dark  way,  is  very  strange. 

For  he  went  in  most  meagrely  prepared.  He  took 
nothing  with  him,  apparently.  The  muskrat  built 
him  a  house,  and  under  the  spreading  ice  turned  all 
the  meadow  into  a  well-stocked  cellar.  The  beaver 
built  a  dam,  cut  and  anchored  under  water  a  plenty 
of  green  sticks  near  his  lodge,  so  that  he  too  would 
be  under  cover  when  the  ice  formed,  and  have  an 
abundance  of  tender  bark  at  hand.  Chipmunk  spent 
half  of  his  summer  laying  up  food  near  his  under- 
ground nest.  But  Woodchuck  simply  digged  him  a 
hole,  a  grave,  then  ate  until  no  particle  more  of  fat 
could  be  got  into  his  baggy  hide,  and  then  crawled 
into  his  tomb,  gave  up  the  ghost,  and  waited  the 
resurrection  of  the  spring. 

This  is  his  shift !  This  is  the  length  to  which  he 
goes,  because  he  has  no  wings,  and  because  he  can- 
not cut,  cure,  and  mow  away  in  the  depths  of  the 
stony  hillside,  enough  clover  hay  to  last  him  over 
the  winter.  The  beaver  cans  his  fresh  food  in  cold 
water;  the  chipmunk  selects  long-keeping  things 
and  buries  them ;  the  woodchuck  makes  of  himself  a 

13 


of 

sjlo,  eats  all  his  winter  hay  in  the  summer  while  it  is 
green,  turns  it  at  once  into  a  surplus  of  himself,  then 
buries  that  self,  feeds  upon  it,  and  sleeps  —  and 
lives ! 

The  north  wind  doth  blow, 
And  we  shall  have  snow, 

but  what  good  reason  is  there  for  our  being  daunted 
at  the  prospect  ?  Robin  and  all  the  others  are  well 
prepared.  Even  the  wingless  frog,  who  is  also  lack- 
ing in  fur  and  feathers  and  fat,  even  he  has  no  care 
at  tfce  sound  of  the  cold  winds.  Nature  provides  for 
him  too,  in  her  way,  which  is  neither  the  way  for  the 
robin,  the  muskrat,  nor  the  woodchuck.  He  survives, 
and  all  he  has  to  do  about  it  is  to  dig  into  the  mud 
at  the  bottom  of  the  ditch.  This  looks  at  first  like 
the  journey  Woodchuck  takes.  But  it  is  really  a 
longer,  stranger  journey  than  Woodchuck's,  for  it 
takes  the  frog  far  beyond  the  realms  of  mere  sleep, 
on  into  the  cold,  black  land  where  no  one  can  tell 
the  quick  from  the  dead. 

The  frost  may  or  may  not  reach  him  here  in  the 
ooze.  No  matter.  If  the  cold  works  down  and  freezes 
him  into  the  mud,  he  never  knows.  But  he  will 
thaw  out  as  good  as  new ;  he  will  sing  again  for  joy 

14 


and  love  as  soon  as  his  heart  warms  up  enough  to 
beat. 

I  have  seen  frogs  frozen  into  the  middle  of  solid 
lumps  of  ice  in  the  laboratory.  Drop  the  lump  on  the 
floor,  and  the  frog  would  break  out  like  a  fragment 
of  the  ice  itself.  And  this  has  happened  more  than 
once  to  the  same  frog  without  causing  him  the  least 
apparent  suffering  or  inconvenience.  He  would  come 
to,  and  croak,  and  look  as  wise  as  ever. 

The  north  wind  may  blow, 

but  the  muskrats  are  building ;  and  it  is  by  no 
means  a  cheerless  prospect,  this  wood-and-meadow 
world  of  mine  in  the  gray  November  light.  The 
frost  will  not  fall  to-night  as  falls  the  plague  on  men ; 
the  brightness  of  the  summer  is  gone,  yet  this  chill 
gloom  is  not  the  sombre  shadow  of  a  pall.  Nothing 
is  dying  in  the  fields :  the  grass-blades  are  wilting, 
the  old  leaves  are  falling,  but  no  square  foot  of 
greensward  will  the  winter  kill,  nor  a  single  tree 
perhaps  in  my  wood-lot.  There  will  be  no  less  of 
life  next  April  because  of  this  winter,  unless,  per- 
chance, conditions  altogether  exceptional  starve  some 
of  the  winter  birds.  These  suffer  most ;  yet  as  the 


of 

seasons  go,  life  even  for  the  winter  birds  is  comfort- 
able and  abundant. 

The  fence-rows  and  old  pastures  are  full  of  berries 
that  will  keep  the  fires  burning  in  the  quail  and  par- 
tridge during  the  bitterest  weather.  Last  February, 
however,  I  came  upon  two  partridges  in  the  snow, 
dead  of  hunger  and  cold.  It  was  after  an  extremely 
long  severe  spell.  But  this  was  not  all.  These  two 
birds  since  fall  had  been  feeding  regularly  in  the 
dried  fodder  corn  that  stood  shocked  over  the  field. 
One  day  all  the  corn  was  carted  away.  The  birds 
found  their  supply  of  food  suddenly  cut  off,  and,  un- 
used to  foraging  the  fence-rows  and  tangles  for  wild 
seeds,  they  seem  to  have  given  up  the  struggle  at 
once,  although  within  easy  reach  of  plenty. 

Hardly  a  minute's  flight  away  was  a  great  thicket 
of  dwarf  sumac  covered  with  berries  ;  there  were 
bayberries,  rose  hips,  green  brier,  bittersweet,  black 
alder,  and  checkerberries  —  hillsides  of  the  latter  — 
that  they  might  have  found.  These  were  hard  fare, 
doubtless,  after  an  unstinted  supply  of  sweet  corn; 
but  still  they  were  plentiful,  and  would  have  been 
sufficient  had  the  birds  made  use  of  them. 

The  smaller  birds  of  the  winter,  like  the  tree 
16 


Q1Xu06tafe  are 

sparrow  and  junco,  feed  upon  the  weeds  and  grasses 
that  ripen  unmolested  along  the  roadsides  and  waste 
places.  A  mixed  flock  of  these  small  birds  lived 
several  days  last  winter  upon  the  seeds  of  the  rag- 
weed in  my  mowing.  The  weeds  came  up  in  the 
early  fall  after  the  field  was  laid  down  to  clover  and 
timothy.  They  threatened  to  choke  out  the  grass.  I 
looked  at  them,  rising  shoulder-high  and  seedy  over 
the  greening  field,  and  thought  with  dismay  of  how 
they  would  cover  it  by  the  next  fall.  After  a  time 
the  snow  came,  a  foot  and  a  half  of  it,  till  only  the 
tops  of  the  seedy  ragweeds  showed  above  the  level 
white;  then  the  juncos,  goldfinches,  and  tree  spar- 
rows came,  and  there  was  a  five-day  shucking  of 
ragweed-seed  in  the  mowing,  and  five  days  of  life 
and  plenty. 

Then  I  looked  and  thought  again  —  that,  perhaps, 
into  the  original  divine  scheme  of  things  were  put 
even  ragweeds.  But  then,  perhaps,  there  was  no 
original  divine  scheme  of  things.  I  don't  know.  As 
I  watch  the  changing  seasons,  however,  across  the 
changeless  years,  I  seem  to  find  a  scheme,  a  plan,  a 
purpose,  and  there  are  weeds  and  winters  in  it,  and 
it  seems  divine. 

17 


of  tfy 

The  muskrats  are  building ;. the  last  of  the  migrat- 
ing geese  have  gone  over ;  the  wild  mice  have  har- 
vested their  acorns ;  the  bees  have  clustered ;  the 
woodchucks  are  asleep ;  and  the  sap  in  the  big  hick- 
ory by  the  side  of  the  house  has  crept  down  out  of 
reach  of  the  fingers  of  the  frost.  I  will  put  on  the 
storm-doors  and  the  double  windows.  Even  now  the 
logs  are  blazing  cheerily  on  the  wide,  warm  hearth. 


n 

ON  the  night  before  this  particular  Christ- 
mas every  creature  of  the  woods  that  could 
stir  was  up  and  stirring,  for  over  the  old  snow  was 
falling  swiftly,  silently,  a  soft,  fresh  covering  that 
might  mean  a  hungry  Christmas  unless  the  dinner 
were  had  before  morning. 

But  when  the  morning  dawned,  a  cheery  Christ- 
mas sun  broke  across  the  great  gum  swamp,  lighting 
the  snowy  boles  and  soft-piled  limbs  of  the  giant 
trees  with  indescribable  glory,  and  pouring,  a  golden 
flood,  into  the  deep  spongy  bottoms 
below.  It  would  be  a  perfect  Christ- 
mas in  the  woods,  clear,  mild, 
stirless,  with  silent  footing  for  me, 
and  everywhere  the  telltale  snow. 
19 


of  t 

And  everywhere  the  Christmas  spirit,  too.  As  I 
paused  among  the  pointed  cedars  of  the  pasture, 
looking  down  into  the  cripple  at  the  head  of  the 
swamp,  a  clear  wild  whistle  rang  in  the  thicket,  fol- 
lowed by  a  flash  through  the  alders  like  a  tongue  of 
fire,  as  a  cardinal  grosbeak  shot  down  to  the  tangle 
of  greenbrier  and  magnolia  under  the  slope.  It  was  a 
fleck  of  flaming  summer.  As  warm  as  summer,  too, 
the  stag-horn  sumac  burned  on  the  crest  of  the  ridge 
against  the  group  of  holly  trees,  —  trees  as  fresh  as 
April,  and  all  aglow  with  berries.  The  woods  were 
decorated  for  the  holy  day.  The  gentleness  of  the 
soft  new  snow  touched  everything ;  cheer  and  good- 
will lighted  the  unclouded  sky  and  warmed  the  thick 
depths  of  the  evergreens,  and  blazed  in  the  crimson- 
berried  bushes  of  the  ilex  and  alder.  The  Christmas 
woods  were  glad. 

Nor  was  the  gladness  all  show,  mere  decoration. 
There  was  real  cheer  in  abundance,  for  I  was  back 
in  the  old  home  woods,  back  along  the  Cohansey, 
back  where  you  can  pick  persimmons  off  the  trees  at 
Christmas.  There  are  persons  who  say  the  Lord  might 
have  made  a  better  berry  than  the  strawberry,  but  He 
did  n't.  Perhaps  He  did  n't  make  the  strawberry  at 

20 


n 

all.  But  He  did  make  the  Cohansey  Creek  persimmon, 
and  He  made  it  as  good  as  He  could.  Nowhere  else 
under  the  sun  can  you  find  such  persimmons  as  these 
along  the  creek,  such  richness  of  flavor,  such  gummy, 
candied  quality,  woodsy,  wild,  crude,  —  especially  the 
fruit  of  two  particular  trees  on  the  west  bank,  near 
Lupton's  Pond.  But  they  never  come  to  this  perfec- 
tion, never  quite  lose  their  pucker,  until  midwinter, 
—  a's  if  they  had  been  intended  for  the  Christmas 
table  of  the  woods. 

It  had  been  nearly  twenty  years  since  I  crossed 
this  pasture  of  the  cedars  on  my  way  to  the  per- 
simmon trees.  The  cows  had  been  crossing  every 
year,  yet  not  a  single  new  crook  had  they  worrT1n 
the  old  paths.  But  I  was  half  afraid  as  I  came  to 
the  fence  where  I  could  look  down  upon  the  pond 
and  over  to  the  persimmon  trees.  Not  one  of  the 
Luptons,  who  owned  pasture  and  pond  and  trees, 
had  ever  been  a  boy,  so  far  as  I  could  remember,  or 
had  ever  eaten  of  those  persimmons.  Would  they 
have  left  the  trees  through  all  these  years  ? 

I  pushed  through  the  hedge  of  cedars  and  stopped 
for  an  instant,  confused.  The  very  pond  was  gone  ! 
and  the  trees!  No,  there  was  the  pond, — but  how 

21 


of  t§e 

small  the  patch  of  water !  and  the  two  persimmon 
trees  ?  The  bush  and  undergrowth  had  grown  these 
twenty  years.  Which  way —  Ah,  there  they  stand, 
only  their  leafless  tops  showing;  but  see  the  hard 
angular  limbs,  how  closely  globed  with  fruit !  how 
softly  etched  upon  the  sky ! 

I  hurried  around  to  the  trees  and  climbed  the  one 
with  the  two  broken  branches,  up,  clear  up  to  the 
top,  into  the  thick  of  the  persimmons. 

Did  I  say  it  had  been  twenty  years  ?  That  could 
not  be.  Twenty  years  would  have  made  me  a  man, 
and  this  sweet,  real  taste  in  my  mouth  only  a  boy 
could  know.  But  there  was  college,  and  marriage,  a 
Massachusetts  farm,  four  boys  of  my  own,  and  —  no 
matter!  it  could  not  have  been  years  —  twenty  years 
— since.  Jt  was  only  yesterday  that  I  last  climbed  this 
tree  and  ate  the  rich  rimy  fruit  frosted  with  a  Christ- 
mas snow. 

And  yet,  could  it  have  been  yesterday?  It  was 
storming,  and  I  clung  here  in  the  swirling  snow  and 
heard  the  wild  ducks  go  over  in  their  hurry  toward 
the  bay.  Yesterday,  and  all  this  change  in  the  vast 
treetop  world,  this  huddled  pond,  those  narrowed 
meadows,  that  shrunken  creek !  I  should  have  eaten 

22 


n 

the  persimmons  and  climbed  straight  down,  not 
stopped  to  gaze  out  upon  the  pond,  and  away  over 
the  dark  ditches  to  the  creek.  But  reaching  out 
quickly  I  gathered  another  handful,  —  and  all  was 
yesterday  again. 

I  filled  both  pockets  of  my  coat  and  climbed  down. 
I  kept  those  persimmons  and  am  tasting  them  to- 
night. Lupton's  Pond  may  fill  to  a  puddle,  the  mead- 
ows may  shrivel,  the  creek  dry  up  and  disappear,  and 
old  Time  may  even  try  his  wiles  on  me.  But  I  shall 
foil  him  to  the  end ;  for  I  am  carrying  still  in  my 
pocket  some  of  yesterday's  persimmons,  —  persim- 
mons that  ripened  in  the  rime  of  a  winter  when  I  was 
a  boy. 

High  and  alone  in  a  bare  persimmon  tree  for  one's 
dinner  hardly  sounds  like  a  merry  Christmas.  But  I 
was  not  alone.  I  had  noted  the  fresh  tracks  beneath 
the  tree  before  I  climbed  up,  and  now  I  saw  that  the 
snow  had  been  partly  brushed  from  several  of  the 
large  limbs  as  the  'possum  had  moved  about  in 
the  tree  for  his  Christmas  dinner.  We  were  guests 
at  the  same  festive  board,  and  both  of  us  at  Nature's 
invitation.  It  mattered  not  that  the  'possum  had 
eaten  and  gone  this  hour  or  more.  Such  is  good  form 

23 


in  the  woods.  He  was  expecting  me,  so  he  came 
early,  out  of  modesty,  and,  that  I  too  might  be  en- 
tirely at  my  ease,  he  departed  early,  leaving  his  greet- 
ings for  me  in  the  snow. 

Thus  I  was  not  alone  ;  here  was  good  company  and 
plenty  of  it.  I  never  lack  a  companion  in  the  woods 
when  I  can  pick  up  a  trail.  The  'possum  and  I  ate 
together.  And  this  was  just  the  fellowship  I  needed, 
this  sharing  the  persimmons  with  the  'possum.  I  had 
broken  bread,  not  with  the  'possum  only,  but  with  all 
the  out-of-doors.  I  was  now  fit  to  enter  the  woods, 
for  I  was  filled  with  good-will  and  persimmons,  as 
full  as  the  'possum  ;  and  putting  myself  under  his 
gentle  guidance,  I  got  down  upon  the  ground,  took 
up  his  clumsy  trail,  and  descended  toward  the  swamp. 
Such  an  entry  is  one  of  the  particular  joys  of  the 
winter.  To  go  in  with  a  fox,  a  mink,  or  a  'possum 
through  the  door  of  the  woods  is  to  find  yourself  at 
home.  Any  one  can  get  inside  the  out-of-doors,  as  the 
grocery  boy  or  the  census  man  gets  inside  our  houses. 
You  can  bolt  in  at  any  time  on  business.  A  trail, 
however,  is  Nature's  invitation.  There  may  be  other, 
better  beaten  paths  for  mere  feet.  But  go  softly  with 
the  'possum,  and  at  the  threshold  you  are  met  by  the 

24 


in  tfyt  Tttoob* 

spirit  of  the  wood,  you  are  made  the  guest  of  the 
open,  silent,  secret  out-of-doors. 

I  went  down  with  the  'possum.  He  had  traveled 
home  leisurely  and  without  fear,  as  his  tracks  plainly 
showed.  He  was  full  of  persimmons.  A  good  happy 
world  this,  where  such  fare  could  be  had  for  the 
picking !  What  need  to  hurry  home,  except  one  were 
in  danger  of  falling  asleep  by  the  way  ?  So  I  thought, 
too,  as  I  followed  his  winding  path ;  and  if  I  was 
tracking  him  to  his  den,  it  was  only  to  wake  him  for 
a  moment  with  the  compliments  of  the  season.  But  it 
was  not  even  a  momentary  disturbance ;  for  when  I 
finally  found  him  in  his  hollow  gum,  he  was  sound 
asleep,  and  only  half  realized  that  some  one  was  pok- 
ing him  gently  in  the  ribs  and  wishing  him  a  merry 
Christmas. 

The  'possum  had  led  me  to  the  centre  of  the 
empty,  hollow  swamp,  where  the  great-boled  gums 
lifted  their  branches  like  a  timbered,  unshingled  roof 
between  me  and  the  wide  sky.  Far  away  through  the 
spaces  of  the  rafters  I  saw  a  pair  of  wheeling  buz- 
zards, and  under  them,  in  lesser  circles,  a  broad- 
winged  hawk.  Here,  at  the  feet  of  the  tall,  clean 
trees,  looking  up  through  the  leafless  limbs,  I  had 

25 


of  tfyt 

something  of  a  measure  for  the  flight  of  the  birds. 
The  majesty  and  the  mystery  of  the  distant  buoyant 
wings  were  singularly  impressive. 

I  have  seen  the  turkey-buzzard  sailing  the  skies  on 
the  bitterest  winter  days.  To-day,  however,  could 
hardly  be  called  winter.  Indeed,  nothing  yet  had  felt 
the  pinch  of  the  cold.  There  was  no  hunger  yet  in 
the  swamp,  though  this  new  snow  had  scared  the 
raccoons  out,  and  their  half-human  tracks  along  the 
margin  of  the  swamp  stream  showed  that,  if  not  hun- 
gry, they  at  least  feared  that  they  might  be. 

For  a  coon  hates  snow.  He  will  invariably  sleep 
off  the  first  light  snowfalls,  and  even  in  the  late 
winter  he  will  not  venture  forth  in  fresh  snow  unless 
driven  by  hunger  or  some  other  dire  need.  Perhaps, 
like  a  cat  or  a  hen,  he  dislikes  the  wetting  of  his  feet. 
Or  it  may  be  that  the  soft  snow  makes  bad  hunting  — 
for  him.  The  truth  is,  I  believe,  that  such  a  snow 
makes  too  good  hunting  for  the  dogs  and  the  gunner. 
The  new  snow  tells  too  clear  a  story.  His  home  is  no 
inaccessible  den  among  the  ledges  ;  only  a  hollow  in 
some  ancient  oak  or  tupelo.  Once  within,  he  is  safe 
from  the  dogs,  but  the  long  fierce  fight  for  life  taught 
him  generations  ago  that  the  nest-tree  is  a  fatal  trap 

26 


in  tt  TJJoob* 


when  behind  the  dogs  come  the  axe  and  the  gun.  So 
he  has  grown  wary  and  enduring.  He  waits  until  the 
snow  grows  crusty,  when  without  sign,  and  almost 
without  scent,  he  can  slip  forth  among  the  long 
shadows  and  prowl  to  the  edge  of  dawn. 

Skirting  the  stream  out  toward  the  higher  back 
woods,  I  chanced  to  spy  a  bunch  of  snow  in  one  of 
the  great  sour  gums  that  I  thought  was  an  old  nest. 
A  second  look  showed  me  tiny  green  leaves,  then 
white  berries,  then  mistletoe. 

It  was  not  a  surprise,  for  I  had  found  it  here  be- 
fore, —  a  long,  long  time  before.  It  was  back  in  my 
schoolboy  days,  back  beyond  those  twenty  years,  that 
I  first  stood  here  under  the  mistletoe  and  had  my  first 
romance.  There  was  no  chandelier,  no  pretty  girl,  in 
that  romance,  —  only  a  boy,  the  mistletoe,  the  giant 
trees,  and  the  sombre  silent  swamp.  Then  there  was 
his  discovery,  the  thrill  of  deep  delight,  and  the 
wonder  of  his  knowledge  of  the  strange  unnatural 
plant  !  All  plants  had  been  plants  to  him  until,  one 
day,  he  read  the  life  of  the  mistletoe.  But  that  was 
English  mistletoe  ;  so  the  boy's  wonder  world  of 
plant  life  was  still  as  far  away  as  Mars,  when,  ram- 
bling alone  through  the  swamp  along  the  creek,  he 

27 


of  t$ 

stopped  under  a  big  curious  bunch  of  green,  high  up 
in  one  of  the  gums,  and  —  made  his  first  discovery. 

So  the  boy  climbed  up  again  this  Christmas  Day 
at  the  peril  of  his  precious  neck,  and  brought  down 
a  bit  of  that  old  romance. 

I  followed  the  stream  along  through  the  swamp  to 
the  open  meadows,  and  then  on  under  the  steep 
wooded  hillside  that  ran  up  to  the  higher  land  of 
corn  and  melon  fields.  Here  at  the  foot  of  the  slope 
the  winter  sun  lay  warm,  and  here  in  the  sheltered 
briery  border  I  came  upon  the  Christmas  birds. 

There  was  a  great  variety  of  them,  feeding  and 
preening  and  chirping  in  the  vines.  The  tangle  was 
a-twitter  with  their  quiet,  cheery  talk.  Such  a  medley 
of  notes  you  could  not  hear  at  any  other  season  out- 
side a  city  bird  store.  How  far  the  different  species 
understood  one  another  I  should  like  to  know,  and 
whether  the  hum  of  voices  meant  sociability  to  them, 
as  it  certainly  meant  to  me.  Doubtless  the  first  cause 
of  their  flocking  here  was  the  sheltered  warmth  and 
the  great  numbers  of  berry-laden  bushes,  for  there 
was  no  lack  either  of  abundance  or  variety  on  the 
Christmas  table. 

In  sight  from  where  I  stood  hung  bunches  of  with- 
28 


in  t§t 

ering  chicken  or  frost  grapes,  plump  clusters  of  blue- 
black  berries  of  the  greenbrier,  and  limbs  of  the 
smooth  winterberry  bending  with  their  flaming  fruit. 
There  were  bushes  of  crimson  ilex,  too,  trees  of  fruit- 
ing dogwood  and  holly,  cedars  in  berry,  dwarf  sumac 
and  seedy  sedges,  while  patches  on  the  wood  slopes 
uncovered  by  the  sun  were  spread  with  trailing  par- 
tridge berry  and  the  coral-fruited  wintergreen.  I  had 
eaten  part  of  my  dinner  with  the  'possum  ;  I  picked  a 
quantity  of  these  wintergreen  berries,  and  continued 
my  meal  with  the  birds.  And  they  also  had  enough 
and  to  spare. 

Among  the  birds  in  the  tangle  was  a  large  flock 
of  northern  fox  sparrows,  whose  vigorous  and  con- 
tinuous scratching  in  the  bared  spots  made  a  most 
lively  and  cheery  commotion.  Many  of  them  were 
splashing  about  in  tiny  pools  of  snow-water,  melted 
partly  by  the  sun  and  partly  by  the  warmth  of  their 
bodies  as  they  bathed.  One  would  hop  to  a  softening 
bit  of  snow  at  the  base  of  a  tussock,  keel  over  and 
begin  to  flop,  soon  sending  up  a  shower  of  sparkling 
drops  from  his  rather  chilly  tub.  A  winter  snow- 
water bath  seemed  a  necessity,  a  luxury  indeed,  for 
they  all  indulged,  splashing  with  the  same  purpose 

29 


Of  tfy 

and  zest  that  they  put  into  their  scratching  among 
the  leaves. 

A  much  bigger  splashing  drew  me  quietly  through 
the  bushes  to  find  a  marsh  hawk  giving  himself 
a  Christmas  souse.  The  scratching,  washing,  and 
talking  of  the  birds ;  the  masses  of  green  in  the 
cedars,  holly,  and  laurels  ;  the  glowing  colors  of  the 
berries  against  the  snow ;  the  blue  of  the  sky,  and 
the  golden  warmth  of  the  light  made  Christmas  in 
the  heart  of  the  noon  that  the  very  swamp  seemed 
to  feel. 

Three  months  later  there  was  to  be  scant  picking 
here,  for  this  was  the  beginning  of  the  severest  win- 
ter I  ever  knew.  From  this  very  ridge,  in  February, 
I  had  reports  of  berries  gone,  of  birds  starving,  of 
whole  coveys  of  quail  frozen  dead  in  the  snow  ;  but 
neither  the  birds  nor  I  dreamed  to-day  of  any  such 
hunger  and  death.  A  flock  of  robins  whirled  into 
the  cedars  above  me ;  a  pair  of  cardinals  whistled 
back  and  forth  ;  tree  sparrows,  j uncos,  nuthatches, 
chickadees,  and  cedar-birds  cheeped  among  the  trees 
and  bushes ;  and  from  the  farm  lands  at  the  top  of 
the  slope  rang  the  calls  of  meadowlarks. 

Halfway  up  the  hill  I  stopped  under  a  blackjack 
30 


in  tt  TUoob* 


oak,  where,  in  the  thin  snow,  there  were  signs  of 
something  like  a  Christmas  revel.  The  ground  was 
sprinkled  with  acorn  shells  and  trampled  over  with 
feet  of  several  kinds  and  sizes,  —  quail,  jay,  and  par- 
tridge feet  ;  rabbit,  squirrel,  and  mice  feet,  all  over 
the  snow  as  the  feast  of  acorns  had  gone  on.  Hun- 
dreds of  the  acorns  were  lying  about,  gnawed  away 
at  the  cup  end,  where  the  shell  was  thinnest,  many 
of  them  further  broken  and  cleaned  out  by  the  birds. 
As  I  sat  studying  the  signs  in  the  snow,  my  eye 
caught  a  tiny  trail  leading  out  from  the  others 
straight  away  toward  a  broken  pile  of  cord-wood. 
The  tracks  were  planted  one  after  the  other,  so 
directly  in  line  as  to  seem  like  the  prints  of  a  single 
foot.  "That's  a  weasel's  trail,"  I  said,  "the  death's- 
head  at  this  feast,"  and  followed  it  slowly  to  the 
wood.  A  shiver  crept  over  me  as  I  felt,  even  sooner 
than  I  saw,  a  pair  of  small  sinister  eyes  fixed  upon 
mine.  The  evil  pointed  head,  heavy  but  alert,  and 
with  a  suggestion  of  fierce  strength  out  of  all  rela- 
tion to  the  slender  body,  was  watching  me  from 
between  the  sticks  of  cord-wood.  And  so  he  had  been 
watching  the  mice  and  birds  and  rabbits  feasting 
under  the  tree  ! 


of 

I  packed  a  ball  of  snow  round  and  hard,  slipped 
forward  upon  my  knees,  and  hurled  it.  "  Spat !  "  it 
struck  the  end  of  a  stick  within  an  inch  of  the  ugly 
head,  filling  the  crevice  with  snow.  Instantly  the 
head  appeared  at  another  crack,  and  another  ball 
struck  viciously  beside  it.  Now  it  was  back  where  it 
first  appeared,  and  did  not  flinch  for  the  next,  nor 
the  next  ball.  The  third  went  true,  striking  with  a 
"chug"  and  packing  the  crack.  But  the  black,  hating 
eyes  were  still  watching  me  a  foot  lower  down. 

It  is  not  all  peace  and  good-will  in  the  Christmas 
woods.  But  there  is  more  of  peace  and  good-will 
than  of  any  other  spirit.  The  weasels  are  few.  More 
friendly  and  timid  eyes  were  watching  me  than  bold 
and  murderous.  It  was  foolish  to  want  to  kill  —  even 
the  weasel.  For  one's  woods  are  what  one  makes 
them,  and  so  I  let  the  man  with  the  gun,  who 
chanced  along,  think  that  I  had  turned  boy  again, 
and  was  snowballing  the  woodpile,  just  for  the  fun 
of  trying  to  hit  the  end  of  the  biggest  stick. 

I  was  glad  he  had  come.  As  he  strode  off  with 
his  stained  bag  I  felt  kindlier  toward  the  weasel. 
There  were  worse  in  the  woods  than  he,  —  worse, 
because  all  of  their  killing  was  pastime.  The  weasel 

32 


n 

must  kill  to  live,  and  if  he  gloated  over  the  kill,  why, 
what  fault  of  his  ?  But  the  other  weasel,  the  one 
with  the  blood-stained  bag,  he  killed  for  the  love 
of  killing.  I  was  glad  he  was  gone. 

The  crows  were  winging  over  toward  their  great 
roost  in  the  pines  when  I  turned  toward  the  town. 
They,  too,  had  had  good  picking  along  the  creek 
flats  and  ditches  of  the  meadows.  Their  powerful 
wing-beats  and  constant  play  told  of  full  crops  and 
no  fear  for  the  night,  already  softly  gray  across  the 
white  silent  fields.  The  air  was  crisper;  the  snow 
began  to  crackle  under  foot ;  the  twigs  creaked  and 
rattled  as  I  brushed  along ;  a  brown  beech  leaf  wav- 
ered down  and  skated  with  a  thin  scratch  over  the 
crust ;  and  pure  as  the  snow-wrapped  crystal  world, 
and  sweet  as  the  soft  gray  twilight,  came  the  call  of 
a  quail. 

The  voices,  colors,  odors,  and  forms  of  summer 
were  gone.  The  very  face  of  things  had  changed ;  all 
had  been  reduced,  made  plain,  simple,  single,  pure ! 
There  was  less  for  the  senses,  but  how  much  keener 
now  their  joy!  The  wide  landscape,  the  frosty  air, 
the  tinkle  of  tiny  icicles,  and,  out  of  the  quiet  of  the 
falling  twilight,  the  voice  of  the  quail ! 

33 


of 

There  is  no  day  but  is  beautiful  in  the  woods ;  and 
none  more  beautiful  than  one  like  this  Christmas 
Day,  —  warm  and  still  and  wrapped,  to  the  round  red 
berries  of  the  holly,  in  the  magic  of  the  snow. 


Ill 
Cur£  for  TtHnfer 

FOR,  lo,  the  winter  is  past, 
The  rain  is  over  and  gone  — 

yet  the  snow  lies  white  upon  the  fields,  my  little 
river  huddles  under  the  ice,  and  a  new  calendar 
hangs  against  the  faded  wall.  But  the  storm  is  spent, 
the  sun  is  out,  there  is  a  cheery  drip,  drip,  drip  from 
the  eaves,  eggs  are  sixty  cents  a  dozen,  and  I  am 
writing  to  the  golden  cackle  of  my  hens.  New  Year's 
Day,  and  winter  gone  !  No,  not  quite  gone,  with  eggs 
at  such  a  price ;  still,  it  must  be  plain  to  every  one 
that  I  can  have  but  little  of  winter  left :  eggs  are 
liable  to  come  down  any  day. 

It  would  be  different,  of  course,  were  I  buying 
eggs  at  sixty  cents,  —  all  the  difference  between  a 
winter-sick  and  a  winter-well  condition.  Selling  eggs 

35 


of 

for  sixty  cents  is  a  cure,  though  not  for  poverty 
when  one  has  only  thirty  hens ;  but  it  is  a  cure  for 
winter.  The  virtue,  however,  is  not  in  the  sixty  cents. 
There  is  no  cure  for  winter  in  mere  money.  The 
virtue  is  in  the  eggs,  or,  perhaps,  it  is  really  found 
in  keeping  the  hens. 

Keeping  the  hens,  and  the  two  pigs,  the  horse, 
the  cow,  the  four  boys,  and  the  farm,  for  the  year 
around,  is  a  sure  cure  for  winter,  and  for  a  great 
many  other  ills.  In  addition  to  the  farm,  one  must 
have  some  kind  of  a  salary,  and  a  real  love  for  na- 
ture ;  but  given  the  boys  and  the  farm,  the  love  will 
come,  for  it  lies  dormant  in  human  nature,  as  certain 
seeds  seem  to  lie  dormant  in  the  soil ;  and  as  for  the 
salary,  one  must  have  a  salary  —  farm  or  flat. 

The  prescription,  then,  should  read  :  — 

R 

A  small  farm  —  of  an  acre  or  more, 
A  small  income  —  of  a  thousand  or  more, 
A  small  family  —  of  four  boys  or  more, 
A  real  love  of  nature. 

Sig.  Morning  and  evening  chores.  The  dose  to  be 
taken  daily,  as  long  as  winter  lasts. 

This  will  cure.   It  is  an  old-fashioned  household 
36 


Cutt  for  TUintetr 

mixture  that  can  be  compounded  in  any  country 
kitchen.  But  that  is  the  trouble  with  it,  —  it  is  a 
home  remedy  that  cannot  be  bought  of  the  apothe- 
cary. There  is  more  trouble  with  it,  too,  largely  on 
account  of  the  regularity  with  which  milking  time 
returns  and  the  dose  of  chores.  But  it  is  effective. 
A  farm  and  congenial  chores  are  a  sovereign  cure 
for  uncongenial  time. 

Here  on  the  farm  the  signs  of  coming  winter  are 
not  ominous  signs.  The  pensive,  mellowing  days  of 
early  autumn  have  been  preparing  the  garden  and 
your  mind  for  the  shock  of  the  first  frost.  Once  past 
this  and  winter  is  welcome ;  it  becomes  a  physical, 
spiritual  need.  The  blood  reddens  at  the  promise  of 
it ;  the  soul  turns  comfortingly  in  and  finds  itself ; 
and  the  digging  of  the  potatoes  commences,  and  the 
shocking  of  the  corn,  the  picking  of  the  apples,  the 
piling  up  on  the  sunny  side  of  the  barn  of  the  big 
golden  squashes. 

A  single  golden  squash  holds  over  almost  enough 
of  the  summer  to  keep  a  long  winter  away  from  the 
farm ;  and  the  six  of  them  in  the  attic,  filling  the 
rafter  room  with  sunshine,  never  allow  the  hoary  old 
monarch  to  show  more  than  his  face  at  the  skylight. 

37 


Pie  is  not  the  only  thing  one  brings  in  with  his  winter 
squashes.  He  stores  the  ripe  September  in  their 
wrinkled  rinds,  rinds  that  are  ridged  and  bossy  with 
the  summer's  gold. 

To  dig  one's  own  potatoes !  to  shock  one's  own 
corn  !  to  pick  one's  own  apples !  to  pile  one's  own 
squashes  at  one's  own  barn  !  It  is  like  filling  one's 
system  with  an  antitoxin  before  going  into  a  fever- 
plagued  country.  One  is  immune  to  winter  after  this, 
provided  he  stays  to  bake  his  apples  in  his  own  wood 
fire.  One  works  himself  into  a  glow  with  all  this 
digging,  and  picking,  and  piling  that  lasts  until 
warm  weather  comes  again ;  and  along  with  this  har- 
vest glow  comes  stealing  over  him  the  after-harvest 
peace.  It  is  the  serenity  of  Indian  summer,  the  mood 
of  the  after-harvest  season,  upon  him,  —  upon  him 
and  his  fields  and  woods. 

The  stores  are  all  in  :  the  acorns  have  ripened  and 
lie  hidden  where  the  squirrels  will  forget  some  of 
them,  but  where  none  of  the  forgotten  will  forget  to 
grow ;  the  winged  seeds  of  the  asters  have  drifted 
down  the  highways,  over  .the  hillsides  and  meadows; 
the  birds  are  gone;  the  muskrats'  lodge  is  all  but 
finished  ;  the  hickories  and  the  leaf-hid  hepaticas  are 

38 


Cutt  for  TXKnfer 

budded  against  the  coming  spring.  All  is  ready,  all 
is  safe,  —  the  stores  are  all  in.  Quiet  and  a  golden 
peace  lie  warm  upon  the  fields.  It  is  Indian  summer. 

Such  a  mood  is  a  necessary  condition  for  the  cure. 
Such  a  mood  is  the  cure,  indeed,  for  such  a  mood 
means  harmony  with  earth  and  sky,  and  every  wind 
that  blows.  In  all  his  physical  life  man  is  as  much  a 
part  of  Nature,  and  as  subject  to  her  inexorable  laws, 
as  the  fields  and  the  trees  and  the  birds.  I  have  seen 
a  maple  growing  out  of  the  pavement  of  a  city  street, 
but  no  such  maple  as  stands  yonder  at  the  centre  of 
my  neighbor's  meadow.  I  lived  and  grew  on  the  same 
street  with  the  maple ;  but  not  as  I  live  and  grow 
here  on  the  farm.  Only  on  a  farm  does  a  man  live  in 
a  normal,  natural  environment,  only  here  can  he  com- 
ply with  all  the  demands  of  Nature,  can  he  find  a  cure 
for  winter. 

To  Nature  man  is  just  as  precious  as  a  woodchuck 
or  a  sparrow,  but  not  more.  She  cares  for  the  wood- 
chuck  as  long  as  he  behaves  like  a  woodchuck ;  so 
she  cares  for  the  sparrow,  the  oyster,  the  orchid,  and 
for  man.  But  he  must  behave  like  a  natural  man, 
must  live  where  she  intended  him  to  live,  and  at  the 
approach  of  winter  he  must  neither  hibernate  nor 

39 


migrate,  for  he  is  what  the  naturalists  call  a  "  winter 
resident."  It  is  not  in  his  nature  to  fly  away  nor  to  go 
to  sleep,  but,  like  the  red  squirrel  and  the  muskrat, 
to  prepare  to  live  up  all  the  winter.  So  his  original, 
unperverted  animal  instinct  leads  him  to  store. 

Long  ago  he  buried  his  provisions  in  pits  and  hung 
them  up  on  poles.  Even  his  vocabulary  he  gathered 
together  as  his  word-hoard.  He  is  still  possessed  of 
the  remnant  of  the  instinct ;  he  will  still  store.  Cage 
him  in  a  city,  give  him  more  than  he  needs  for  winter, 
relieve  him  of  all  possibility  of  want,  and  yet  he  will 
store.  You  cannot  cage  an  instinct  nor  eradicate  it. 
It  will  be  obeyed,  if  all  that  can  be  found  in  the  way 
of  pit  and  pole  be  a  grated  vault  in  the  deep  recesses 
of  some  city  bank. 

Cage  a  red  squirrel  and  he  will  store  in  the  cage ; 
so  will  the  white-footed  mouse.  Give  the  mouse  more 
than  he  can  use,  put  him  in  a  cellar,  where  there  is 
enough  already  stored  for  a  city  of  mice,  and  he  will 
take  from  your  piles  and  make  piles  of  his  own.  He 
must  store  or  be  unhappy  and  undone. 

A  white-footed  mouse  got  into  my  cellar  last  winter 
and  found  it,  like  the  cellar  of  the  country  mouse  in 
the  fable,  - 

40 


Cure  for 

Full  benely  stuffit,  baith  but  and  ben, 

Of  beirris  and  nuttis,  peis,  ry  and  quheit  — 

all  of  it,  ready  stored,  so  that, 

Quhen  ever  scho  list  scho  had  aneuch  to  eit. 
Enough  to  eat  ?  Certainly ;  but  is  enough  to  eat  all 
that  a  mouse  wants  ?  So  far  from  being  satisfied  with 
mere  meat  was  this  particular  mouse,  that  finding 
herself  in  the  cellar  in  the  midst  of  plenty,  she  at 
once  began  to  carry  my  winter  stores  from  where  I 
had  put  them,  and  to  make  little  heaps  for  herself 
in  every  dark  cranny  and  corner  of  the  cellar.  A  pint, 
or  less,  of  "  nuttis  "  —  shagbarks  —  she  tucked  away 
in  the  toe  of  my  hunting  boot.  The  nuts  had  been 
left  in  a  basket  in  the  vegetable  cellar ;  the  boots 
stood  out  by  the  chimney  in  the  furnace  room,  and 
there  were  double  doors  and  a  brick  partition  wall 
between.  No  matter.  Here  were  the  nuts  she  had 
not  yet  stored,  and  out  yonder  was  the  hole,  smooth 
and  deep  and  dark,  to  store  them  in.  She  found  a 
way  past  the  partition  wall. 

Every  morning  I  shook  those  nuts  out  of  my  boot 
and  sent  them  rattling  over  the  cellar  floor.  Every 
night  the  mouse  gathered  them  up  and  put  them 
snugly  back  into  the  toe  of  the  boot.  She  could  not 

41 


have  carried  more  than  one  nut  at  a  time,  —  up  the 
tall  boot-leg  and  down  the  oily,  slippery  inside.  I 
should  have  liked  to  see  her  scurrying  about  the 
cellar,  looking  after  her  curiously  difficult  harvest. 
Apparently,  they  were  new  nuts  to  her  every  evening. 
Once  or  twice  I  came  down  to  find  them  lying  un- 
touched. The  mouse,  perhaps,  was  away  over  night 
on  other  business.  But  the  following  night  they 
were  all  gathered  and  nicely  packed  in  the  boot 
as  before.  And  as  before  I  sent  them  sixty  ways 
among  the  barrels  and  boxes  of  the  furnace  room. 
But  I  did  it  once  too  often,  for  it  dawned  upon 
the  mouse  one  night  that  these  were  the  same  old 
nuts  that  she  had  gathered  now  a  dozen  times ;  and 
that  night  they  disappeared.  Where?  I  wondered. 
Weeks  passed,  and  I  had  entirely  forgotten  about  the 
nuts,  when  I  came  upon  them,  the  identical  nuts  of 
my  boot,  tiered  carefully  up  in  a  corner  of  the  deep, 
empty  water-tank  away  off  in  the  attic. 

Store?  The  mouse  had  to  store.  She  had  to,  not 
to  feed  her  body,  —  there  was  plenty  in  the  cellar  for 
that,  —  but  to  satisfy  her  soul.  A  mouse's  soul,  that 
something  within  a  mouse  which  makes  for  more  than 
meat,  may  not  be  a  soul  at  all,  but  only  a  bundle  of 

42 


Cute  for  TXKnfer 

blind  instincts.  The  human  soul,  that  thing  whose 
satisfaction  is  so  often  a  box  of  chocolates  and  a  silk 
petticoat,  may  be  better  and  higher  than  the  soul  of 
a  mouse,  may  be  a  different  thing  indeed ;  but  origi- 
nally it,  too,  had  simple,  healthful  instincts;  and 
among  them,  atrophied  now,  but  not  wholly  gone, 
may  still  be  found  the  desire  for  a  life  that  is  more 
than  something  to  eat  and  something  to  put  on. 

To  be  sure,  here  on  the  farm,  one  may  eat  all  of  his 
potatoes,  his  corn,  his  beans  and  squashes  before  the 
long,  lean  winter  comes  to  an  end.  But  if  squashes 
to  eat  were  all,  then  he  could  buy  squashes,  bigger, 
fairer,  fatter  ones,  and  at  less  cost,  no  doubt,  at  the 
grocery  store.  He  may  need  to  eat  the  squash,  but 
what  he  needs  more,  and  cannot  buy,  is  the  raising 
of  it,  the  harvesting  of  it,  the  fathering  of  it.  He  needs 
to  watch  it  grow,  to  pick  it,  to  heft  it,  and  have  his 
neighbor  heft  it;  to  go  up  occasionally  to  the  attic 
and  look  at  it.  He  almost  hates  to  eat  it. 

A  man  may  live  in  the  city  and  buy  a  squash  and 
eat  it.  That  is  all  he  can  do  with  a  boughten  squash ; 
for  a  squash  that  he  cannot  raise,  he  cannot  store, 
nor  take  delight  in  outside  of  pie.  And  can  a  man 
live  where  his  garden  is  a  grocery?  his  storehouse  a 

43 


of 

grocery?  his  bins,  cribs,  mows,  and  attics  so  many 
pasteboard  boxes,  bottles,  and  tin  cans  ?  Tinned  squash 
in  pie  may  taste  like  any  squash  pie ;  but  it  is  no  longer 
squash;  and  is  a  squash  nothing  if  not  pie?  Oh,  but 
he  gets  a  lithograph  squash  upon  the  can  to  show  him 
how  the  pulp  looked  as  God  made  it.  This  is  a  sop 
to  his  higher  sensibilities;  it  is  a  commercial  re- 
minder, too,  that  life  even  in  the  city  should  be  more 
than  pie,  —  it  is  also  the  commercial  way  of  preserving 
the  flavor  of  the  canned  squash,  else  he  would  not 
know  whether  he  were  eating  squash  or  pumpkin  or 
sweet  potato.  But  then  it  makes  little  difference, 
all  things  taste  the  same  in  the  city, — all  taste  of 
tin. 

There  is  a  need  in  the  nature  of  man  for  many 
things, — for  a  wife,  a  home,  children,  friends,  and  a 
need  for  winter.  The  wild  goose  feels  it,  too,  and  no 
length  of  domesticating  can  tame  the  wild  desire  to 
fly  when  the  frosts  begin  to  fall ;  the  woodchuck  feels 
it;  carry  him  to  the  tropics  and  still  he  will  sleep  as 
though  the  snows  of  New  England  lay  deep  in  the 
mouth  of  his  burrow.  The  partridge's  foot  broadens 
at  the  approach  of  winter  into  a  snowshoe;  the  er- 
mine's fur  turns  snow-white.  Winter  is  in  their  bones ; 

44 


Cure  for 

it  is  good  for  them;  it  is  health,  not  disease — with 
snowshoes  provided  and  snow-colored  fur. 

Nature  supplies  her  own  remedies.  Winter  brings 
its  own  cure,  —  snowshoes  and  snowy  coats,  short 
days  and  long  nights,  the  narrowed  round,  the  wid- 
ened view,  the  open  fire,  leisure,  quiet,  and  the  com- 
panionship of  your  books,  your  children,  your  wife, 
your  own  strange  soul  —  here  on  the  farm. 

Where  else  does  it  come,  bringing  all  of  this  ? 
Where  else  are  conditions  such  that  all  weather  is 
good  weather  ?  the  weather  a  man  needs  ?  Here  he 
is  planted  like  his  trees  ;  his  roots  are  in  the  soil ;  the 
changing  seasons  are  his  life.  He  feeds  upon  them  ; 
works  with  them  ;  rests  in  them ;  yields  to  them,  and 
finds  in  their  cycle  more  than  the  sum  of  his  physical 
needs. 

A  man  lives  quite  without  roots  in  a  city,  like  some 
of  the  orchids,  hung  up  in  the  air ;  or  oftener,  like 
the  mistletoe,  rooted,  but  drawing  his  life  parasiti- 
cally  from  some  simpler,  stronger,  fresher  life  planted 
far  below  him  in  the  soil.  There  he  cannot  touch  the 
earth  and  feed  upon  life's  first  sources.  He  knows 
little  of  any  kind  but  bad  weather.  Summer  is  hot, 
winter  is  nasty,  spring  and  autumn  scarcely  are  at, 

45 


of  t$t 

all,  for  they  do  not  make  him  uncomfortable.  The 
round  year  is  four  changes  of  clothes  —  and  a  tank- 
sprinkled,  snow-choked,  smoke-clouded,  cobble-paved, 
wheel-wracked,  street-scented,  wire-lighted  half-day, 
half-night  something,  that  is  neither  spring,  summer, 
autumn,  nor  winter. 

A  city  is  a  sore  on  the  face  of  Nature  ;  not  a  dan- 
gerous, ugly  sore,  necessarily,  if  one  can  get  out  of 
it  often  enough  and  far  enough,  but  a  sore,  neverthe- 
less, that  Nature  will  have  nothing  kindly  to  do  with. 
The  snows  that  roof  my  sheds  with  Carrara,  that 
robe  my  trees  with  ermine,  that  spread  close  and 
warm  over  my  mowing,  that  call  out  the  sleds  and 
the  sleigh-bells,  fall  into  the  city  streets  as  mud,  as 
danger  on  the  city  roofs,  —  as  a  nuisance  over  the 
city's  length  and  breadth,  a  nuisance  to  be  hauled 
off  and  dumped  into  the  harbor  as  fast  as  shovels 
and  carts  can  move  it. 

But  you  cannot  dump  your  winter  and  send  it  off 
to  sea.  There  is  no  cure  for  winter  in  a  tip-cart ;  no 
cure  in  the  city.  There  is  consolation  in  the  city,  for 
there  is  plenty  of  company  in  the  misery.  But  com- 
pany really  means  more  of  the  misery.  If  life  is  to 
be  endured,  if  all  that  one  can  do  with  winter  is  to 

46 


for 

shovel  it  and  suffer  it,  then  to  the  city  for  the  winter, 
for  there  one's  share  of  the  shoveling  is  small,  and 
the  suffering  there  seems  very  evenly  distributed. 

Here  on  the  farm  is  neither  shoveling  nor  suffer- 
ing, no  quarrel  whatever  with  the  season.  Here  you 
have  nothing  to  do  with  its  coming  or  going  further 
than  making  preparation  to  welcome  it  and  to  bid  it 
farewell.  You  slide,  instead,  with  your  boys  ;  you  do 
up  the  chores  early  in  the  short  twilight,  pile  the 
logs  high  by  the  blazing  chimney  and — you  remem- 
ber that  there  is  to  be  a  lecture  to-night  by  the  man 
who  has  said  it  all  in  his  book ;  there  is  to  be  a  con- 
cert, a  reception,  a  club  dinner,  in  the  city,  sixteen 
blissful  miles  away,  —  and  it  is  snowing !  You  can  go 
if  you  have  to.  But  the  soft  tapping  on  the  window- 
panes  grows  faster,  the  voices  at  the  corners  of  the 
house  rise  higher,  shriller.  You  look  down  at  your 
slippers,  poke  up  the  fire,  settle  a  little  deeper  into 
the  big  chair,  and  beg  Eve  to  go  on  with  the  reading. 
And  she  reads  on  — 

Shut  in  from  all  the  world  without, 

We  sat  the  clean-winged  hearth  about, 

Content  to  let  the  north  wind  roar 

In  baffled  rage  at  pane  and  door, 

While  the  red  logs  before  us  beat 

47 


of  t$ 

The  frost-line  back  with  tropic  heat ; 
And  ever,  when  a  louder  blast 
Shook  beam  and  rafter  as  it  passed, 
The  merrier  up  its  roaring  draught 
The  great  throat  of  the  chimney  laughed. 

And,  for  the  winter  fireside  meet, 
Between  the  andirons'  straddling  feet, 
The  mug  of  cider  simmered  slow, 
The  apples  sputtered  in  a  row, 
And,  close  at  hand,  the  basket  stood 
With  nuts  from  brown  October's  wood. 

But  you  will  be  snow-bound  in  the  morning  and 
cannot  get  to  town  ?  Perhaps ;  but  it  happened  so 
only  twice  to  me  in  the  long  snowy  winter  of  1904. 
So  twice  we  read  the  poem,  and  twice  we  lived  the 
poem,  and  twice?  yes,  a  thousand  times,  we  were 
glad  for  a  day  at  home  that  was  n't  Sunday,  for  a 
whole  long  day  to  pop  corn  with  the  boys. 

A  farm,  of  all  human  habitations,  is  most  of  a 
home,  and  never  so  much  of  a  home  as  in  the  winter 
when  the  stock  and  the  crops  are  housed,  when  fur- 
row and  boundary  fence  are  covered,  when  earth  and 
sky  conspire  to  drive  a  man  indoors  and  to  keep  him 
in,  —  where  he  needs  to  stay  for  a  while  and  be  quiet. 

No  problem  of  city  life  is  more  serious  than  the 
48 


Cute  for  TXKntet: 

problem  of  making  in  the  city  a  home.  A  habitation 
where  you  can  have  no  garden,  no  barn,  no  attic,  no 
cellar,  no  chickens,  no  bees,  no  boys  (we  were  al- 
lowed one  boy  by  the  janitor  of  our  city  flat),  no 
fields,  no  sunset  skies,  no  snow-bound  days,  can 
hardly  be  a  home.  To  live  in  the  fifth  flat,  at  No.  6 
West  Seventh  Street,  is  not  to  have  a  home.  Pic- 
tures on  the  walls,  a  fire  in  the  grate,  and  a  prayer 
in  blending  zephyrs  over  the  door  for  God  to  bless 
the  place  can  scarcely  make  of  No.  6  more  than  a 
sum  in  arithmetic.  There  is  no  home  environment 
about  this  fifth  flat  at  No.  6,  just  as  there  is  none 
about  cell  No.  6,  in  the  fifth  tier  of  the  west  corridor 
of  the  Tombs. 

The  idea,  the  concept,  home,  is  a  house  set  back 
from  the  road  behind  a  hedge  of  trees,  a  house  with  a 
yard,  with  flowers,  chickens,  and  a  garden,  —  a  country 
home.  The  songs  of  home  are  all  of  country  homes  :  — 

How  dear  to  this  heart  are  the  scenes  of  my  childhood 
When  fond  recollection  presents  them  to  view  : 

The  gutter,  the  lamp-post,  the  curb  that  ran  by  it, 
And  e'en  the  brass  spigot  that  did  for  a  well.  — 

Impossible !  You  cannot  sing  of  No.  6,  West  Seventh, 

49 


fifth  flight  up.  And  what  of  a  home  that  cannot  be 
remembered  as  a  song !  It  is  not  a  home,  but  only  a 
floor  over  your  head,  a  floor  under  your  feet,  a  hole 
in  the  wall  of  the  street,  a  burrow  into  which  you 
are  dumped  by  a  hoisting  machine.  It  is  warm  in- 
side ;  Eve  is  with  you,  and  the  baby,  and  your  books. 
But  you  do  not  hear  the  patter  of  the  rain  upon  the 
roof,  nor  the  murmur  of  the  wind  in  the  trees ;  you 
do  not  see  the  sun  go  down  beyond  the  wooded  hills, 
nor  ever  feel  the  quiet  of  the  stars.  You  have  no 
largeness  round  about  you;  you  are  the  centre  of 
nothing  ;  you  have  no  garden,  no  harvest,  no  chores, 
— no  home  !  There  is  not  room  enough  about  a  city 
flat  for  a  home,  nor  chores  enough  in  city  life  for  a 
living. 

For  a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  an  abundance  of 
things,  but  in  the  particular  kind  and  number  of  his 
chores.  A  chore  is  a  fragment  of  real  life  that  is 
lived  with  the  doing.  All  real  living  must  be  lived  ; 
it  cannot  be  bought  or  hired.  And  herein  is  another 
serious  problem  in  city  life,  —  it  is  the  tragedy  of  city 
life  that  it  is  so  nearly  all  lived  for  us.  We  hire 
Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  to  live  it ;  we  buy  it  of  the 
butcher,  the  baker,  the  candlestick-maker.  It  is  not 

So 


Cutt  for  TXKnfer 

so  here  on  the  farm ;  for  here  one  has  the  full  round 
of  life's  chores,  and  here,  on  a  professor's  salary,  one 
may  do  all  the  chores  himself. 

We  may  hire  our  praying  and  our  thinking  done 
for  us  and  still  live ;  but  not  our  chores.  They  are  to 
the  life  of  the  spirit  what  breathing  and  eating  and 
sleeping  are  to  the  life  of  the  body.  Not  to  feed  your 
own  horse  is  to  miss  the  finest  joy  of  having  a  horse, 
—  the  friendship  of  the  noble  creature ;  not  to  "pick 
up"  the  eggs  yourself,  nor  hoe  your  own  garden, nor 
play  with  your  own  boys !  Why,  what  is  the  use  of 
having  boys  if  you  are  never  going  to  be  "it  "  again, 
if  you  are  not  to  be  a  boy  once  more  along  with 
them! 

There  are  some  things,  the  making  of  our  clothes, 
perhaps,  that  we  must  hire  done  for  us.  But  clothes 
are  not  primitive  and  essential ;  they  are  accidental, 
an  adjunct,  a  necessary  adjunct,  it  may  be,  but  be- 
longing to  a  different  category  from  children,  gar- 
dens, domestic  animals,  and  a  domestic  home.  And 
yet,  how  much  less  cloth  we  should  need,  and  what 
a  saving,  too,  of  life's  selvage,  could  we  return  to  the 
spinning-wheel  and  loom  as  we  go  back  to  the  farm 
and  the  daily  chores ! 

51 


of 

She,  harvest  done,  to  char  work  did  aspire, 
Meat,  drink,  and  twopence  were  her  daily  hire. 

And  who  has  not  known  the  same  aspiration  ?  has 
not  had  a  longing  for  mere  chores,  and  their  ample 
compensation  ?  It  is  such  a  reasonable,  restful,  satis- 
fying aspiration!  Harvest  done!  Done  the  work  and 
worry  of  the  day !  Then  the  twilight,  and  the  even- 
ing chores,  and  the  soft  closing  of  the  door !  At 
dawn  we  shall  go  forth  again  until  the  evening ; 
but  with  a  better  spirit  for  our  labor  after  the  fine 
discipline  of  the  morning  chores.  The  day  should 
start  and  stop  in  our  own  selves ;  labor  should  begin 
and  come  to  an  end  in  the  responsibility  of  the  whole- 
some, homely  round  of  our  own  chores. 

Summer  is  gone,  the  harvest  is  done,  and  winter 
is  passing  on  its  swiftest  days.  So  swift,  indeed,  are 
the  days  that  morning  and  evening  meet,  bound  up 
like  a  sheaf  by  the  circle  of  the  chores.  For  there  is 
never  an  end  to  the  chores  ;  never  a  time  when  they 
are  all  done ;  never  a  day  when  the  round  of  them 
is  not  to  be  done  again.  And  herein  lies  more  of 
their  virtue  as  a  winter  cure. 

Life  is  not  busier  here  than  elsewhere  ;  time  is  not 
swifter,  but  more  enjoyable,  because  so  much  of  life 

52 


Cutre  for 

is  left  unfinished  and  time  is  thrown  so  much  more 
into  the  future.  There  is  no  past  on  the  farm  ;  it  is 
all  to  come ;  no  sure  defeat,  but  always  promise ; 
no  settled  winter,  but  always  the  signs  of  coming 
spring. 

To-day  is  the  first  of  January,  snowy,  brilliant, 
but  dripping  with  the  sound  of  spring  wherever  the 
sun  lies  warm,  and  calling  with  the  heart  of  spring 
yonder  where  the  crows  are  flocking.  There  is 
spring  in  the  talk  of  the  chickadees  outside  my  win- 
dow, and  in  the  cheerful  bluster  of  a  red  squirrel  in 
the  hickory.  No  bluebird  has  returned  yet :  spring  is 
not  here,  not  quite,  I  hope,  but  it  is  coming,  and  so 
near  that  I  shall  drop  my  pen  and  go  out  to  the  barn 
to  put  together  some  new  beehives,  for  I  must  have 
them  ready  for  the  spring,  Winter  !  The  winter  is 
almost  gone.  Why,  it  is  barely  a  month  since  I 
brought  my  bees  into  the  cellar,  and  here  I  am 
taking  them  out  again  — in  prospect. 

The  hives  have  just  come  from  the  factory  "in  the 
flat":  sawed,  planed,  dovetailed,  and  matched,  —  a 
delightful  set  of  big  blocks,  —  ready  to  be  nailed  to- 
gether. You  feel  a  bit  mean,  keeping  them  from  the 
children.  But  the  oldest  of  the  boys  is  only  six,  and 

53 


of 

he  had  a  walking  bear  for  Christmas.  Besides,  when 
you  were  a  little  boy  you  never  had  many  blocks,  and 
never  a  walking  bear.  So  you  keep  the  hives.  And 
how  suddenly  the  January  day  goes !  You  hammer 
on  into  the  deepening  dusk,  and  the  chickens  go  to 
roost  without  their  supper.  You  would  have  ham- 
mered on  all  night,  but  the  hives  ran  out.  Five  hives 
won't  last  very  long  ;  and  you  sigh  as  they  stand 
finished.  You  could  wish  them  all  in  pieces  to  do 
over  again,  so  smooth  the  stock,  so  fragrant  the  piny 
smell,  so  accurate  and  nice  the  parts  from  cover  to 
bottom  board  ! 

Winter !  with  January  started,  and  February  two 
days  short !  It  is  all  a  fiction.  You  had  dreams  of 
long  evenings,  of  books  and  crackling  fires,  and  of 
days  shut  in.  It  still  snows ;  there  is  something 
still  left  of  the  nights,  but  not  half  enough,  for  the 
seed  catalogues  are  already  beginning  to  arrive. 

The  snow  lies  a  foot  deep  over  the  strawberry 
bed  and  the  frozen  soil  where  the  potatoes  are  to 
be.  Yet  the  garden  grows  —  on  paper  ?  No,  not  on 
paper,  but  in  your  own  eager  soul.  The  joy  of  a 
garden  is  as  real  in  January  as  in  June. 

And  so  the  winter  goes.  For  if  it  is  not  the  gar- 
54 


Cut#  for  TXKnfer 

den  and  the  bees,  it  is  some  of  a  thousand  other 
chores  that  keep  you  busy  and  living  past  the  pre- 
sent, —  and  past  the  present  is  the  spring. 

I  am  watching  for  the  phcebes  to  return  to  the 
shed,  —  they  are  my  first  birds.  I  long  to  hear  the 
shrill  piping  of  the  March  frogs,  to  pick  a  blue 
hepatica  from  beneath  the  pines ;  for  these  are  some 
of  the  things,  besides  cheaper  rent,  more  room,  more 
boys,  fresh  air,  quiet,  and  a  cow,  that  one  lives  for 
here  on  the  farm.  But  I  am  not  waiting,  winter-sick, 
for  I  have  stored  the  summer  in  attic  and  cellar; 
I  am  already  having  my  spring  —  in  prospect ;  and 
as  for  the  actual  winter,  the  snow-bound  days  are  all 
too  few  for  the  real  winter  joys  of  this  simple,  ample 
life,  here  in  the  quiet,  among  the  neighbor  fields. 


IV 


I  HAD  made  a  nice  piece  of  dissection,  a  pretty 
demonstration  —  for  a  junior. 

"  You  did  n't  know  a  dog  was  put  together  so 
beautifully,  did  you  ?  "  said  the  professor,  frankly 
enjoying  the  sight  of  the  marvelous  system  of  nerves 
laid  bare  by  the  knife.  "  Now,  see  here,"  he  went 
on,  eyeing  me  keenly,  "does  n't  a  revelation  like 
that  take  all  the  moonshine  about  the  '  beauties  of 
nature  '  clean  out  of  you  ?  " 

I  looked  at  the  lifeless  lump  upon  my  table,  and 
answered  very  deliberately  :  "No,  it  doesn't.  That's 

56 


a  fearful  piece  of  mechanism.  I  appreciate  that.  But 
what  is  any  system  of  nerves  or  muscles  —  mere 
dead  dog  —  compared  with  the  love  and  affection 
of  the  dog  alive  ? " 

The  professor  was  trying  to  make  a  biologist  out 
of  me.  He  had  worked  faithfully,  but  I  had  persisted 
in  a  very  unscientific  love  for  live  dog.  Not  that  I 
didn't  enjoy  comparative  anatomy,  for  I  did.  The 
problem  of  concrescence  or  differentiation  in  the 
cod's  egg  also  was  intensely  interesting  to  me.  And 
so  was  the  sight  and  the  suggestion  of  the  herring 
as  they  crowded  up  the  run  on  their  way  to  the 
spawning  pond.  The  professor  had  lost  patience.  I 
don't  blame  him. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  turning  abruptly,  "  you  had  better 
quit.  You'll  be  only  a  biological  fifth  wheel." 

I  quit.  Here  on  my  table  lies  the  scalpel.  Since 
that  day  it  has  only  sharpened  lead  pencils. 

Now  a  somewhat  extensive  acquaintance  with  sci- 
entific folk  leads  me  to  believe  that  the  attitude  of 
my  professor  toward  the  out-of-doors  is  not  excep- 
tional. The  love  for  nature  is  all  moonshine,  all 
maudlin  sentiment.  Even  those  like  my  professor, 
who  have  to  do  with  out-of-door  life  and  conditions, 

57 


—  zoologists,  botanists,  geologists,  —  look  upon  nat- 
uralists, and  others  who  love  birds  and  fields,  as  of 
a  kind  with  those  harmless  but  useless  inanities  who 
collect  tobacco  tags,  postage  stamps,  and  picture 
postal  cards.  Sentiment  is  not  scientific. 

I  have  a  biological  friend,  a  professor  of  zoology, 
who  never  saw  a  woodchuck  in  the  flesh.  He  would 
not  know  a  woodchuck  with  the  fur  on  from  a  mon- 
goose. Not  until  he  had  skinned  it  and  set  up  the 
skeleton  could  he  pronounce  it  Arctomys  monax  with 
certainty.  Yes,  he  could  tell  by  the  teeth.  Dentition 
is  a  great  thing.  He  could  tell  a  white  pine  (strobus) 
from  a  pitch  pine  (rigida)  by  just  a  cone  and  a 
bundle  of  needles,  —  one  has  five,  the  other  three, 
to  the  bundle.  But  he  would  n't  recognize  a  columned 
aisle  of  the  one  from  a  Jersey  barren  of  the  other. 
That  is  not  the  worst  of  it :  he  would  not  see  even 
the  aisle  or  the  barren,  —  only  trees. 

As  we  jogged  along  recently,  on  a  soft  midwinter 
day  that  followed  a  day  of  freezing,  my  little  three- 
year-old  threw  his  nose  into  the  air  and  cried :  "  Oh, 
fader,  I  smell  de  pitch  pines,  de  scraggly  pines,  — 
'ou  calls  'em  Joisey  pines ! "  And  sure  enough,  around 
a  double  curve  in  the  road  we  came  upon  a  single 

58 


clump  of  the  scraggly  pitch  pines.  Our  drive  had 
taken  us  through  miles  of  the  common  white  species. 

Did  you  ever  smell  the  pitch  pines  when  they  are 
thawing  out  ?  It  is  quite  as  healthful,  if  not  as  sci- 
entific, to  recognize  them  by  their  resinous  breath  as 
by  their  needles  per  bundle. 

I  want  this  small  boy  some  time  to  know  the  dif- 
ference between  these  needle  bundles.  But  I  want 
him  to  learn  now,  and  to  remember  always,  that  the 
hard  days  are  sure  to  soften,  and  that  then  there 
oozes  from  the  scraggly  pitch  pines  a  balm,  a  piny, 
penetrating,  purifying  balm,  — a  tonic  to  the  lungs, 
a  healing  to  the  soul. 

All  foolishness  ?  sentiment  ?  moonshine  ?  —  this 
love  for  woods  and  fields,  this  need  I  have  for  com- 
panionship with  birds  and  trees,  this  longing  for 
the  feel  of  grass  and  the  smell  of  earth  ?  When 
I  told  my  biological  friend  that  these  longings  were 
real  and  vital,  as  vital  as  the  highest  problems  of  the 
stars  and  the  deepest  questions  of  life,  he  pitied  me, 
but  made  no  reply. 

He  sees  clearly  a  difference  between  live  and  dead 
men,  a  difference  between  the  pleasure  he  gets  from 
the  society  of  his  friends,  and  the  knowledge,  inter- 

59 


of  f§e 

esting  as  it  may  be,  which  he  obtains  in  a  dissecting- 
room.  But  he  sees  no  such  difference  between  live 
and  dead  nature,  nature  in  the  fields  and  in  the  lab- 
oratory. Nature  is  all  a  biological  problem  to  him, 
not  a  quick  thing,  —  a  shape,  a  million  shapes,  in- 
formed with  spirit, — a  voice  of  gladness,  a  mild  and 
healing  sympathy,  a  companionable  soul. 

"  But  there  you  go  !  "  he  exclaims,  "talking  poetry 
again.  Why  don't  you  deal  with  facts?  What  do 
you  mean  by  nature-study,  love  for  the  out-of-doors, 
anyway ! " 

I  do  not  mean  a  sixteen  weeks'  course  in  zoology, 
or  botany,  or  in  Wordsworth.  I  mean,  rather,  a  gentle 
life  course  in  getting  acquainted  with  the  toads  and 
stars  that  sing  together,  for  most  of  us,  just  within 
and  above  our  own  dooryards.  It  is  a  long  life  course 
in  the  deep  and  beautiful  things  of  living  nature,  — 
the  nature  we  know  so  well  as  a  corpse.  It  is  of 
necessity  a  somewhat  unsystematized,  incidental, 
vacation-time  course,  —  the  more 's  the  pity.  The 
results  do  not  often  come  as  scientific  discoveries. 
They  are  personal,  rather ;  more  after  the  manner 
of  revelations,— data  that  the  professors  have  little 
faith  in.  For  the  scientist  cannot  put  an  April  dawn 

60 


into  a  bottle,  cannot  cabin  a  Hockomock  marsh,  nor 
cage  a  December  storm  in  a  laboratory.  And  when, 
in  such  a  place,  did  a  scientist  ever  overturn  a  "wee 
bit  heap  o'  weeds  an'  stibble "  ?  Yet  it  is  out  of 
dawns  and  marshes  and  storms  that  the  revelations 
come ;  yes,  and  out  of  mice  nests,  too,  if  you  love  all 
the  out-of-doors,  and  chance  to  be  ploughing  late  in 
the  fall. 

But  there  is  the  trouble  with  my  professor.  He 
never  ploughs  at  all.  How  can  he  understand  and 
believe  ?  And  is  n't  this  the  trouble  with  many  of 
our  preacher  poets,  also  ?  Some  of  them  spend  their 
summers  in  the  garden ;  but  the  true  poet  —  and 
the  naturalist  —  must  stay  later,  and  they  must 
plough,  plough  the  very  edge  of  winter,  if  they  would 
turn  up  what  Burns  did  that  November  day  in  the 
field  at  Mossgiel. 

How  amazingly  fortunate  were  the  conditions  of 
Burns's  life !  What  if  he  had  been  professor  of  Eng- 
lish literature  at  Edinburgh  University?  He  might 
have  written  a  life  of  Milton  in  six  volumes,  —  a 
monumental  work,  but  how  unimportant  compared 
with  the  lines  "To  a  Mouse  "  ! 

We  are  going  to  live  real  life  and  write  real  poetry 
61 


of 

again,  —  when  all  who  want  to  live,  who  want  to 
write,  draw  directly  upon  life's  first  sources.  To  live 
simply,  and  out  of  the  soil !  To  live  by  one's  own 
ploughing,  and  to  write  ! 

Instead,  how  do  we  live  ?  How  do  I  live  ?  Nine 
months  in  the  year  by  talking  bravely  about  books 
that  I  have  not  written.  Between  times  I  live  on  the 
farm,  hoe,  and  think,  and  write,  — whenever  the  hoe- 
ing is  done.  And  where  is  my  poem  to  a  mouse  ? 

Its  silly  wa's  the  win's  are  strewin  ! 

With  a  whole  farm  o'  foggage  green,  and  all  the 
year  before  me,  I  am  not  sure  that  I  could  build  a 
single  line  of  genuine  poetry.  But  I  am  certain  that, 
in  living  close  to  the  fields,  we  are  close  to  the  source 
of  true  and  great  poetry,  where  each  of  us,  at  times, 
hears  lines  that  Burns  and  Wordsworth  left  unmea- 
sured,—  lines  that  we  at  least  may  live  into  song. 

Now,  I  have  done  just  what  my  biological  friend 
knew  I  would  do,  —  made  over  my  course  of  nature- 
study  into  a  pleasant  but  idle  waiting  for  inspiration. 
I  have  frankly  turned  poet !  No,  not  unless  Gilbert 
White  and  Jefferies,Thoreau,  Burroughs,  Gibson,  Tor- 
rey,  and  Rowland  Robinson  are  poets.  But  they  are 
poets.  We  all  are,  —  even  the  biologist,  with  half  a 

62 


chance,  —  and  in  some  form  we  are  all  waiting  for 
inspiration.  The  nature-lover  who  lives  with  his  fields 
and  skies  simply  puts  himself  in  the  way  of  the  most 
and  gentlest  of  such  inspirations. 

He  may  be  ploughing  when  the  spirit  comes,  or 
wandering,  a  mere  boy,  along  the  silent  shores  of  a 
lake,  and  hooting  at  the  owls.  You  remember  the 
boy  along  the  waters  of  Winander,  how  he  would 
hoot  at  the  owls  in  the  twilight,  and  they  would  call 
back  to  him  across  the  echoing  lake  ?  And  when 
there  would  come  a  pause  of  baffling  silence, 

Then,  sometimes,  in  that  silence,  while  he  hung 
Listening,  a  gentle  shock  of  mild  surprise 
Has  carried  far  into  his  heart  the  voice 
Of  mountain-torrents ;  or  the  visible  scene 
Would  enter  unawares  into  his  mind 
With  all  its  solemn  imagery. 

That  is  an  inspiration,  the  kind  of  experience  one 
has  in  living  with  the  out-of-doors.  It  does  n't  come 
from  books,  from  laboratories,'  not  even  from  an 
occasional  tramp  afield.  It  is  out  of  companionship 
with  nature  that  it  comes;  not  often,  perhaps,  to  any 
one,  nor  only  to  poets  who  write.  I  have  had  such 
experiences,  such  moments  of  quiet  insight  and 

63 


of 

uplift,  while  in  the  very  narrowest  of  the  paths  of 
the  woods. 

It  was  in  the  latter  end  of  December,  upon  a 
gloomy  day  that  was  heavy  with  the  oppression  of 
a  coming  storm.  In  the  heart  of  the  maple  swamp  all 
was  still  and  cold  and  dead.  Suddenly,  as  out  of  a 
tomb,  I  heard  the  small,  thin  cry  of  a  tiny  tree  frog. 
And  how  small  and  thin  it  sounded  in  the  vast 
silences  of  that  winter  swamp !  And  yet  how  clear 
and  ringing!  A  thrill  of  life  tingling  out  through 
the  numb,  nerveless  body  of  the  woods  that  has  ever 
since  made  a  dead  day  for  me  impossible. 

That  was  an  inspiration.  I  learned  something, 
something  deep  and  beautiful.  Had  I  been  Burns  or 
Wordsworth  I  should  have  written  a  poem  to  Hyla. 
All  prose  as  I  am,  I  was,  nevertheless,  so  quickened 
by  that  brave  little  voice  as  to  write  :  — 

The  fields  are  bleak,  the  forests  bare, 

The  swirling  snowflakes  fall 
About  the  trees  a  winding-sheet, 

Across  the  fields  a  pall. 

A  wide,  dead  waste,  and  leaden  sky, 

Wild  winds,  and  dark  and  cold  ! 
The  river's  tongue  is  frozen  thick, 

With  life's  sweet  tale  half  told. 
64 


Dead !  Ah,  no !  the  white  fields  sleep, 

The  frozen  rivers  flow ; 
And  summer's  myriad  seed-hearts  beat 

Within  this  .breast  of  snow. 

With  spring's  first  green  the  holly  glows 

And  flame  of  autumn  late,  — 
The  embers  of  the  summer  warm 

In  winter's  roaring  grate. 

The  thrush's  song  is  silent  now, 

The  rill  no  longer  sings, 
But  loud  and  long  the  strong  winds  strike 

Ten  million  singing  strings. 

O'er  mountains  high,  o'er  prairies  far, 

Hark !  the  wild  paean's  roll ! 
The  lyre  is  strung  'twixt  ocean  shores 

And  swept  from  pole  to  pole  ! 

My  meeting  with  that  frog  in  the  dead  of  winter 
was  no  trifling  experience,  nor  one  that  the  biologist 
ought  to  fail  to  understand.  Had  I  been  a  poet,  that 
meeting  would  have  been  of  consequence  to  all  the 
world ;  as  I  was,  however,  it  meant  something  only 
to  me,  —  a  new  point  of  view,  an  inspiration,  —  a 
beautiful  poem  that  I  cannot  write. 

This   attitude  of  the  nature-lover,   because  it  is 
contemplative  and  poetical,  is  not  therefore  mystical 

65 


or  purely  sentimental.  Hooting  at  the  owls  and 
hearing  things  in  baffling  silences  may  not  be  sci- 
entific. Neither  is  it  unscientific.  The  attitude  of 
the  boy  beside  the  starlit  lake  is  not  that  of  Charlie, 
the  man  who  helps  me  occasionally  on  the  farm. 

We  were  clearing  up  a  bit  of  mucky  meadow  re- 
cently when  we  found  a  stone  just  above  the  surface 
that  was  too  large  for  the  horse  to  haul  out.  We 
decided  to  bury  it. 

Charlie  took  the  shovel  and  mined  away  under  the 
rock  until  he  struck  a  layer  of  rather  hard  sandstone. 
He  picked  a  while  at  this,  then  stopped  a  while ;  picked 
again,  rather  feebly,  then  stopped  and  began  to  think 
about  it.  It  was  hard  work, — the  thinking,  I  mean, 
harder  than  the  picking,  —  but  Charlie,  however  un- 
scientific, is  an  honest  workman,  so  he  thought  it 
through. 

"Well,"  he  said  finally,  "'t  ain't  no  use,  nohow. 
You  can't  keep  it  down.  You  bury  the  darned  thing, 
and  it  '11  come  right  up.  I  suppose  it  grows.  Of 
course  it  does.  It  must.  Everything  grows." 

Now  that  is  an  unscientific  attitude.  But  that  is 
not  the  mind  of  the  nature-lover,  of  the  boy  with  the 
baffling  silences  along  the  starlit  lake.  He  is  senti- 

66 


mental,  certainly,  yet  not  ignorant,  nor  merely  vapid. 
He  does  not  always  wander  along  the  lake  by  night. 
He  is  a  nature-student,  as  well  as  a  nature-lover,  and 
he  does  a  great  deal  more  than  hoot  at  the  owls. 
This,  though,  is  as  near  as  he  comes  to  anything 
scientific,  and  so  worth  while,  according  to  the  pro- 
fessor. 

II 

And  it  is  as  near  as  he  ought  to  come  to  reality 
and  facts  —  according  to  the  philosopher. 

"We  want  only  the  facts  of  nature,"  says  the  sci- 
entist. "Nothing  in  nature  is  worth  while,"  says  the 
philosopher,  "but  mood,  background,  atmosphere." 

"Nor  can  I  recollect  that  my  mind,"  says  one  of 
our  philosophers,  "in  these  walks,  was  much  called 
away  from  contemplation  by  the  petty  curiosities  of 
the  herbalist  or  birdlorist,  for  I  am  not  one  zealously 
addicted  to  scrutinizing  into  the  minuter  secrets -of 
nature.  It  never  seemed  to  me  that  a  flower  was 
made  sweeter  by  knowing  the  construction  of  its 
ovaries.  .  .  .  The  wood  thrush  and  the  veery  sing  as 
melodiously  to  the  uninformed  as  to  the  subtly  curi- 
ous. Indeed,  I  sometimes  think  a  little  ignorance  is 
wholesome  in  our  communion  with  nature." 

67 


of 

So  it  is.  Certainly  if  ignorance,  a  great  deal  of  igno- 
rance, were  unwholesome,  then  nature-study  would 
be  a  very  unhealthy  course,  indeed.  For,  when  the 
most  curious  of  the  herbalists  and  birdlorists  (Mr. 
Burroughs,  say)  has  made  his  last  prying  peep  into 
the  private  life  of  a  ten-acre  woodlot,  he  will  still  be 
wholesomely  ignorant  of  the  ways  of  nature.  Is  the 
horizon  just  back  of  the  brook  that  marks  the  termi- 
nus of  our  philosopher's  path  ?  Let  him  leap  across, 
walk  on,  on,  out  of  his  woods  to  the  grassy  knoll  in 
the  next  pasture,  and  there  look  !  Lo !  far  yonder  the 
horizon !  beyond  a  vaster  forest  than  he  has  known, 
behind  a  range  of  higher  rolling  hills,  within  a  shroud 
of  wider,  deeper  mystery. 

There  is  n't  the  slightest  danger  of  walking  off 
the  earth ;  nor  of  unlearning  our  modicum  of  whole- 
some ignorance  concerning  the  universe.  The  nature- 
lover  may  turn  nature-student  and  have  no  fear  of 
losing  nature.  The  vision  will  not  fade. 

Let  him  go  softly  through  the  May  twilight  and 
wait  at  the  edge  of  the  swamp.  A  voice  serene  and 
pure,  a  hymn,  a  prayer,  fills  all  the  dusk  with  peace. 
Let  him  watch  and  see  the  singer,  a  brown-winged 
wood  thrush,  with  full,  spotted  breast.  Let  him  be 

68 


glad  that  it  is  not  a  white-winged  spirit,  or  a  disem- 
bodied voice.  And  let  him  wonder  the  more  that  so 
plain  a  singer  knows  so  divine  a  song. 

Our  philosopher  mistakes  his  own  dominant  mood 
for  the  constant  mood  of  nature.  But  nature  has  no 
constant  mood.  No  more  have  we.  Dawn  and  dusk 
are  different  moods.  The  roll  of  the  prairie  is  unlike 
the  temper  of  a  winding  cowpath  in  a  New  England 
pasture.  Nature  is  not  always  sublime,  awful,  and 
mysterious ;  and  no  one  but  a  philosopher  is  persist- 
ently contemplative.  Indeed,  at  four  o'clock  on  a 
June  morning  in  some  old  apple  orchard,  even  the 
philosopher  would  shout,  — 

"  Hence,  loathed  melancholy !  " 

He  is  in  no  mind  for  meditation;  and  it  is  just  pos- 
sible, before  the  day  is  done,  that  the  capture  of  a 
drifting  seed  of  the  dandelion  and  the  study  of  its 
fairy  wings  might  so  add  to  the  wonder,  if  not  to 
the  sweetness,  of  the  flower,  as  to  give  him  thought 
for  a  sermon. 

There  are  times  when  the  companionship  of  your 
library  is  enough ;  there  are  other  times  when  you 
want  a  single  book,  a  chapter,  a  particular  poem.  It 

69 


of  f§e 

is  good  at  times  just  to  know  that  you  are  turning 
with  the  earth  under  the  blue  of  the  sky;  and  just 
as  good  again  to  puzzle  over  the  size  of  the  spots  in 
the  breasts  of  our  several  thrushes.  For  I  believe 
you  can  hear  more  in  the  song  when  you  know  it  is 
the  veery  and  not  the  wood  thrush  singing.  Indeed, 
I  am  acquainted  with  persons  who  had  lived  neigh- 
bors to  the  veery  since  childhood,  and  never  had 
heard  its  song  until  the  bird  was  pointed  out  to 
them.  Then  they  could  not  help  but  hear. 

No  amount  of  familiarity  will  breed  contempt  for 
your  fields.  Is  the  summer's  longest,  brightest  day 
long  enough  and  bright  enough,  to  dispel  the  brood- 
ing mystery  of  the  briefest  of  its  nights?  And  tell 
me,  what  of  the  vastness  and  terror  of  the  sea  will 
the  deep  dredges  ever  bring  to  the  surface,  or  all 
the  circumnavigating  drive  to  shore  ?  The  nature- 
lover  is  a  man  in  a  particular  mood ;  the  nature- 
student  is  the  same  man  in  another  mood,  as  the 
fading  shadows  of  the  morning  are  the  same  that 
lengthen  and  deepen  in  the  afternoon.  There  are 
times  when  he  will  go  apart  into  the  desert  places 
to  pray.  Most  of  the  time,  however,  he  will  live  con- 
tentedly within  sound  of  the  dinner  horn,  glad  of 

70 


the  companionship  of  his  bluebirds,  chipmunks,  and 
pine  trees. 

This  is  best.  And  the  question  most  frequently 
asked  me  is,  How  can  I  come  by  a  real  love  for  my 
pine  trees,  chipmunks,  and  bluebirds  ?  How  can  I 
know  real  companionship  with  nature? 

How  did  the  boy  along  the  starlit  lake  come  by 
it,  —  a  companionship  so  real  and  intimate  that  the 
very  cliffs  knew  him,  that  the  owls  answered  him, 
that  even  the  silences  spoke  to  him,  and  the  imagery 
of  his  rocks  and  skies  became  a  part  of  the  inner 
world  in  which  he  dwelt  ?  Simply  by  living  along 
Winander  and  hallooing  so  often  to  the  owls  that 
they  learned  to  halloo  in  reply.  You  may  need:  to 
be  born  again  before  you  can  talk  the  language  of 
the  owls ;  but  if  there  is  in  you  any  hankering  for 
the  soil,  then  all  you  need  for  companionship  with 
nature  is  a  Winander  of  your  own,  a  range,  a  haunt, 
that  you  can  visit,  walk  around,  and  get  home  from 
in  a  day's  time.  If  this  region  can  be  the  pastures, 
woodlots,  and  meadows  that  make  your  own  door- 
yard,  then  that  is  good;  especially  if  you  buy  the 
land  and  live  on  it,  for  then  Nature  knows  that  you 
are  not  making  believe.  Sne  will  accept  you  as  she 


of  tfy 

does  the  peas  you  plant,  and  she  will  cherish  you  as 
she  does  them.  This  farm,  or  haunt,  or  range,  you 
will  come  to  know  intimately:  its  flowers,  birds, 
walls,  streams,  trees,  —  its  features  large  and  small, 
as  they  appear  in  June,  and  as  they  look  in  July  and 
in  January. 

For  the  first  you  will  need  the  how-to-know  books, 
—  these  while  you  are  getting  acquainted ;  but  soon 
acquaintance  grows  into  friendship.  You  are  done 
naming  things.  The  meanings  of  things  now  begin 
to  come  home  to  you.  Nature  is  taking  you  slowly 
back  to  herself.  Companionship  has  begun. 

Many  persons  of  the  right  mind  never  know  this 
friendship,  because  they  never  realize  the  necessity 
of  being  friendly.  They  walk  through  a  field  as  they 
walk  through  a  crowded  street;  they  go  into  the 
country  as  they  go  abroad.  And  the  result  is  that  all 
this  talk  of  the  herbalist  and  birdlorist,  to  quote  the 
philosopher  again,  seems  "little  better  than  cant 
and  self-deception." 

But  let  the  philosopher  cease  philosophizing  (he 
was  also  a  hermit),  and  leave  off  hermiting ;  let  him 
live  at  home  with  his  wife  and  children,  like  the  rest 
of  us ;  let  him  work  in  the  city  for  his  living,  hoe  in 

72 


his  garden  for  his  recreation;  and  then  (I  don't  care 
by  what  prompting)  let  him  study  the  lay  of  his  neigh- 
bor fields,  woods,  and  orchards  until  he  knows  every 
bird  and  beast,  every  tree-hole,  earth-hole,  even  the 
times  and  places  of  the  things  that  grow  in  the 
ground ;  let  him  do  this  through  the  seasons  of  the 
year,  —  for  two  or  three  years,  —  and  he  will  know 
how  to  enjoy  a  woodchuck;  he  will  understand  many 
of  the  family  affairs  of  his  chipmunks ;  he  will  re- 
cognize and  welcome  back  his  bluebirds  ;  he  will  love 
and  often  listen  to  the  solemn  talk  of  his  pines. 

All  of  this  may  be  petty  prying,  not  communion 
at  all ;  it  may  be  all  moonshine  and  sentiment,  not 
science.  But  it  is  not  cant  and  self-deception,  —  in 
the  hearts  of  thousands  of  simple,  sufficient  folk, 
who  know  a  wood  thrush  when  they  hear  him,  and 
whose  woodpaths  are  of  their  own  wearing.  And  if 
it  is  not  communion  with  nature,  I  know  that  it  is 
at  least  real  pleasure,  and  rest,  peace,  contentment, 
red  blood,  sound  sleep,  and,  at  times,  it  seems  to  me, 
something  close  akin  to  religion. 


ONCE  (it  was  a  good  while  ago,  when  I  was  a  boy),  I 
tried  to  write  a  poem.  The  first  stanza  ran :  — 

I  heard  him  when  the  reeds  were  young 

Along  a  clover  sea  ; 
Above  the  purple  waves  he  hung, 
And  o'er  the  fragrant  waters  flung 

His  storm  of  ecstasy; 

and  the  last  stanza  ran  :  — 

He  1s  left  the  meadows  burnt  and  hot, 
He  's  left  me  lone  and  drear  ; 
But  still  within  the  white-birch  lot 
Cheeps  Chickadee  —  whom  I  forgot 
While  Bobolink  was  here ; 

74 


which  means  in  plainer  prose  that  chickadee  does  not 
sing  a  while  in  June  and  then  fly  away  and  leave  us. 
He  stays  the  year  around;  he  is  constant  and  faithful 
in  his  friendship,  though  I  sometimes  forget. 

He  cannot  sing  with  bobolink.  But  suppose  I  could 
have  only  one  of  the  birds  ?  As  it  is,  I  get  along  for 
more  than  half  the  year  without  bobolink,  but  what 
would  my  out-of-doors  be  without  chickadee  ?  There 
is  not  a  single  day  in  the  year  that  I  cannot  find  him, 
no  matter  how  hot,  or  cold,  how  hard  it  rains  or  snows. 
Often  he  is  the  only  voice  in  all  the  silent  woods,  the 
only  spark  of  life  aglow  in  all  my  frozen  winter  world. 

I  was  crunching  along  through  the  January  dusk 
toward  home.  The  cold  was  bitter.  A  half-starved 
partridge  had  just  risen  from  the  road  and  fluttered 
off  among  the  naked  bushes,  —  a  moment  of  sound,  a 
bit  of  life  vanishing  in  the  winter  night  of  the  woods. 
I  knew  the  very  hemlock  in  which  he  would  roost ; 
but  what  \vere  the  thick,  snow-bent  boughs  of  his 
hemlock,  and  what  were  all  his  winter  feathers  in 
such  a  night  as  this?  —  this  vast  of  sweeping  winds 
and  frozen  snow ! 

The  road  dipped  from  the  woods  into  a  meadow, 
where  the  winds  were  free.  The  cold  was  driving, 

75 


of 

numbing  here  with  a  power  for  death  that  the  ther- 
mometer could  not  mark.  I  backed  into  the  wind 
and  hastened  on  toward  the  double  line  of  elms  that 
arched  the  road  in  front  of  the  house.  Already  I 
could  hear  them  creak  and  rattle  like  things  of  glass. 
It  was  not  the  sound  of  life.  Nothing  was  alive ;  for 
what  could  live  in  this  long  darkness  and  fearful  cold  ? 

Could  live?  The  question  was  hardly  thought, 
when  an  answer  was  whirled  past  me  into  the  near- 
est of  the  naked  elms.  A  chickadee !  He  caught  for 
an  instant  on  a  dead  limb  over  the  road,  scrambled 
along  to  its  broken  tip,  and  whisked  over  into  a  hole 
that  ran  straight  down  the  centre  of  the  stub,  down, 
for  I  don't  know  how  far. 

I  stopped.  The  stub  lay  out  upon  the  wind,  with  only 
an  eddy  of  the  gale  sucking  at  the  little  round  hole  in 
the  broken  end,  while  far  down  in  its  hollow  heart, 
huddling  himself  into  a  downy,  dozy  ball  for  the  night, 
was  the  chickadee.  I  know  by  the  very  way  he  struck 
the  limb  and  turned  in  that  he  had  been  there  before. 
He  knew  whither,  across  the  sweeping  meadows,  he 
was  being  blown.  He  had  even  helped  the  winds  as 
they  whirled  him,  for  he  had  tarried  along  the  roads 
till  late.  But  he  was  safe  for  the  night  now,  in  the 

76 


very  bed,  it  may  be,  where  he  was  hatched  last  sum- 
mer, and  where  at  this  moment,  who  knows,  were  half 
a  dozen  other  chickadees,  the  rest  of  that  last  sum- 
mer's brood,  unscathed  still,  and  still  sharing  the  old 
home  hollow,  as  snug  and  warm  this  bitter  night  as 
in  the  soft  May  days  when  they  were  nestlings  here 
together. 

The  cold  drove  me  on  ;  but  the  chickadee  had 
warmed  me  and  all  my  naked  world  of  night  and 
death.  And  so  he  ever  does.  The  winter  has  yet  to 
be  that  drives  him  seeking  shelter  to  the  south.  I 
never  knew  it  colder  than  in  January  and  February 
of  1904.  During  both  of  those  months,  morning  and 
evening,  I  drove  through  a  long  mile  of  empty,  snow- 
buried  woods.  For  days  at  a  time  I  would  not  see  even 
a  crow,  but  morning  and  evening,  at  a  certain  dip  in 
the  road,  two  chickadees  would  fly  from  bush  to  bush 
across  the  hollow  and  cheer  me  on  the  way.  They 
came  out  to  the  road,  really,  to  pick  up  whatever 
scanty  crumbs  were  to  be  found  in  my  wake.  They 
came  also  to  hear  me,  to  see  me  pass,  —  to  escape  for 
a  moment,  I  think,  the  silence,  desertion,  and  death 
of  the  woods.  They  helped  me  to  escape,  too. 

Four  other  chickadees,  all  winter  long,  ate  with 
77 


of 

us,  sharing,  as  far  as  the  double  windows  would  allow, 
the  cheer  of  our  dining-room.  We  served  them  on  the 
lilac  bush  outside  the  window,  tying  their  suet  on  so 
that  they  could  see  us  and  we  them  during  meal  time. 
Perhaps  it  was  mere  suet,  no  feast  of  soul  at  all,  that 
they  got ;  but  constantly,  when  our  pie  was  opened, 
the  birds  began  to  sing,  —  a  dainty  dish  indeed,  sa- 
vory, wholesome,  and  good  for  our  souls. 

There  are  states  in  the  far  Northwest  where  the 
porcupine  is  protected  by  law,  as  a  last  food  resource 
for  men  lost  and  starving  in  the  forests.  Perhaps  the 
porcupine  was  not  designed  by  nature  for  any  such 
purpose.  Perhaps  chickadee  was  not  left  behind  by 
summer  to  feed  our  lost  and  starving  hope  through 
the  cheerless  months.  But  that  is  the  use  I  make  of 
him.  He  is  summer's  pledge  to  me.  The  woods  are 
hollow,  the  winds  chill,  the  earth  cold  and  stiff,  but 
there  flits  chickadee,  and  —  I  cannot  lose  faith,  nor 
feel  that  this  procession  of  bleak  white  days  is  all  a 
funeral ! 

He  is  the  only  bird  in  my  little  world  that  I  can  find 
without  fail  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in  the 
year.  From  December  to  the  end  of  March  he  comes 
daily  to  my  lilac  bush  for  suet ;  from  April  to  early 

78 


July  he  is  busy  with  domestic  cares  in  the  gray  birches 
of  the  woodlot;  from  August  to  December  he  and  his 
family  come  hunting  quietly  and  sociably  as  a  little 
flock  among  the  trees  and  bushes  of  the  farm  ;  and 
from  then  on  he  is  back  for  his  winter  meals  at  "  The 
Lilac." 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  he  was  the  first  bird  I  ever 
felt  personally  acquainted  with,  and  the  first  bird  my 
children  knew?  That  early  acquaintance,  however, 
was  not  due  to  his  abundance  and  intrusion,  as  it 
might  be  with  the  English  sparrow,  but  rather  due 
to  the  cheerful,  confiding,  sociable  spirit  of  the  little 
bird.  He  drops  down  and  peeps  under  your  hat-brim 
to  see  what  manner  of  boy  you  are,  and  if  you  are 
really  fit  to  be  abroad  in  this  world,  so  altogether 
good  —  for  chickadees. 

He  has  a  mission  to*  perform  besides  the  eating 
of  eggs  and  grubs  of  the  pestiferous  insects.  This 
destruction  he  does  that  the  balance  of  things  may 
be  maintained  out  of  doors.  He  has  quite  another 
work  to  do,  which  is  not  economic,  and  which,  in 
nowise,  is  a  matter  of  fine  feathers  or  sweet  voice, 
but  simply  a  matter  of  sweet  nature,  vigor,  and  con- 
centrated cheerfulness. 

79 


of 

I  said  he  is  summer's  pledge,  the  token  of  hope 
to  me.  He  is  a  lesson  also.  I  don't  often  find  ser- 
mons in  stones,  because,  no  doubt,  I  look  so  little 
for  the  sermons,  so  little  for  the  very  stones.  But  I 
cannot  help  seeing  chickadee,  —  and  chickadee  is  all 
sermon.  I  hear  him  on  a  joyous  May  morning  call- 
ing Chick-a-dee  !  dee  !  Chick-a-dee  !  dee  !  —  brisk, 
bright,  and  cheery ;  or,  soft  and  gentle  as  a  caress, 
he  whistles,  Phce-ee-bee !  Phce-ee-bee !  I  meet  him 
again  on  the  edge  of  a  bleak,  midwinter  night.  He 
is  hungry  and  cold,  and  he  calls,  as  I  hasten  along, 
Chick-a-dee !  dee!  CJiick-a-dee !  dee!  —  brisk,  bright, 
and  cheery;  or,  soft  and  gentle  as  a  caress,  he 
whistles,  Phce-ee-bee  !  Phce-ee-bee  ! 

Will  you  lend  me  your  wings,  chickadee,  those  in- 
visible wings  on  which  you  ride  the  winds  of  life  so 
evenly  ?  For  I  would  hang  ray  ill-balanced  soul  be- 
tween them,  as  your  bird  soul  hangs,  and  fly  as  you 
fly. 

The  abundant  summer,  the  lean  and  wolfish  winter, 
find  chickadee  cheerful  and  gentle.  He  is  busier  at 
some  seasons  than  at  others,  with  fewer  chances 
for  friendship.  He  almost  disappears  in  the  early 
summer.  But  this  is  because  of  family  cares  ;  and 

80 


because  the  bigger,  louder  birds  have  come  back, 
and  the  big  leaves  have  come  out  and  hidden  him. 
A  little  searching,  and  you  will  discover  him,  in  one 
of  your  old  decayed  fence  posts,  maybe,  or  else  deep 
in  the  swamp,  foraging  for  a  family  so  numerous 
that  they  spill  over  at  the  door  of  their  home. 

Here  about  the  farm,  this  is  sure  to  be  a  gray 
birch  home.  Other  trees  will  do  —  on  a  pinch.  I 
have  found  chickadee  nesting  in  live  white  oaks, 
maples,  upturned  roots,  and  tumbling  fence  posts. 
These  were  shifts,  however,  mere  houses,  not  real 
homes.  The  only  good  homelike  trees  are  old  gray 
birches  dead  these  many  years  and  gone  to  punk,  — 
mere  shells  of  tough  circular  bark  walls. 

Why  has  chickadee  this  very  decided  preference  ? 
Is  it  a  case  of  protective  coloration,  —  the  little  gray 
and  black  bird  choosing  to  nest  in  this  little  gray  and 
black  tree  because  bird  and  tree  so  exactly  match  each 
other  in  size  and  color  ?  Or  (and  there  are  many 
instances  in  nature)  is  there  a  subtle  strain  of  poetry 
in  chickadee's  soul,  something  aesthetic,  that  leads 
him  into  this  exquisite  harmony,  —  into  this  little  gray 
house  for  his  little  gray  self  ? 

Explain  it  as  you  may,  it  is  a  fact  that  this  little 
Si 


of  t 

bird  shows  a  marked  preference,  makes  deliberate 
choice,  and  in  his  choice  is  protection,  and  poetry, 
too.  Doubtless  he  follows  the  guidance  of  a  sure  and 
watchful  instinct  (whatever  instinct  be),  but  who  shall 
deny  to  him  a  share  of  the  higher,  finer  things  of  the 
imagination  ?  a  share  of  real  aesthetic  taste? 

His  life  inside  the  birch  is  of  a  piece  with  the 
artistic  exterior.  It  is  all  gentle  and  sweet  and  idyllic. 
There  is  no  happier  spot  in  the  summer  woods  than 
that  about  the  birch  of  the  chickadees ;  and  none 
whose  happiness  you  will  be  so  little  liable  to  disturb. 

Before  the  woods  were  in  leaf  one  spring  I  found 
a  pair  of  chickadees  building  in  a  birch  along  the  edge 
of  the  swamp.  They  had  just  begun,  having  dug  out 
only  an  inch  of  cavity.  It  was  very  interesting  to  dis- 
cover them  doing  the  work  themselves,  for  usually 
they  refit  some  abandoned  chamber  or  adapt  a  ready- 
made  hole. 

The  birch  was  a  long,  limbless  cylinder  of  bark, 
broken  off  about  fourteen  feet  up,  and  utterly  rotten, 
the  mere  skin  of  a  tree  stuffed  with  dust.  I  could 
push  my  finger  into  it  at  any  point.  It  was  so  weak 
that  every  time  the  birds  lighted  upon  the  top  the 
whole  stub  wobbled  and  reeled.  Surely  they  were 

82 


building  their  house  upon  the  sand.  Any  creature 
without  wings  would  have  known  that.  Birds,  how- 
ever, seem  to  have  lost  the  sense  of  such  insecu- 
rity, often  placing  their  nests  as  if  they  expected 
them  also  to  take  wings  and  fly  to  safety  when  the 
rains  descend  and  the  winds  come. 

This  shaking  stub  of  the  chickadees  was  standing 
directly  beneath  a  great  overshadowing  pine,  where, 
if  no  partridge  bumped  into  it,  if  two  squirrels  did  not 
scamper  up  it  together,  if  the  crows  nesting  overhead 
did  not  discover  it,  if  no  strong  wind  bore  down  upon 
it  from  the  meadow  side,  it  might  totter  out  the  nest- 
ing season.  But  it  didn't.  The  birds  were  leaving 
too  much  to  luck.  I  knew  it,  and  should  have  pushed 
their  card  house  down,  then  and  there,  and  saved  the 
greater  ruin  later.  Perhaps  so,  but  I  was  too  inter- 
ested in  their  labor. 

Both  birds  were  working  when  I  discovered  them, 
and  so  busily  that  my  coming  up  did  not  delay  them 
for  a  single  billful.  It  was  not  hard  digging,  but  it 
was  very  slow,  for  chickadee  is  neither  carpenter  nor 
mason.  He  has  difficulty  in  killing  a  hard-backed  bee- 
tle. So,  whenever  you  find  him  occupying  a  clean- 
walled  cavity,  with  a  neat,  freshly  clipped  doorway, 

83 


of 

you  may  be  sure  that  some  woodpecker  built  the  house, 
not  this  short-billed,  soft-tailed  little  tit.  He  lacks 
both  the  bill-chisel  and  the  tail-brace.  Perhaps  the 
explanation  of  his  fondness  for  birch  trees  lies  here : 
they  die  young  and  soon  decay. 

The  birds  were  going  down  through  the  top,  not 
by  a  hole  in  the  leathery  rind  of  the  sides,  for  the 
bark  would  have  been  too  tough  for  their  beaks. 
They  would  drop  into  the  top  of  the  stub,  pick  up  a 
wad  of  decayed  wood,  and  fly  off  to  the  dead  limb  of 
the  pine.  Here,  with  a  jerk  and  a  snap  of  their  bills, 
they  would  scatter  the  stuff  in  a  shower  so  thin  and 
far  around  that  I  could  neither  hear  it  fall  nor  find  a 
trace  of  it  upon  the  dead  leaves  of  the  ground.  This 
nest  would  never  be  betrayed  by  the  workmen's 
chips. 

Between  the  pair  there  averaged  three  beakfuls  of 
excavating  every  two  minutes,  one  of  the  birds  regu- 
larly shoveling  twice  to  the  other's  once.  They  looked 
so  exactly  alike  that  I  could  not  tell  which  bird  was 
pushing  the  enterprise ;  but  I  have  my  suspicions. 

There  is  nothing  so  superior  about  his  voice  or 
appearance  that  he  should  thus  shirk.  He  was  doing 
part  of  his  duty,  apparently,  but  it  was  half-hearted 

84 


work.  Hers  was  the  real  interest,  the  real  anxiety ; 
and  hers  the  initiative.  To  be  a  male  and  show  off  ! 
That 's  the  thing.  To  be  a  male  and  let  your  wife 
carry  the  baby !  The  final  distinctive  difference  be- 
tween a  truly  humanized,  civilized  man  and  all  other 
males  of  every  order,  is  a  willingness  to  push  the 
baby  carriage. 

The  finer  the  feathers  or  the  song  among  male 
birds  the  less  use  they  are  in  practical,  domestic  ways. 
Fine  beaux,  captivating  lovers,  they  become  little  else 
than  a  nuisance  as  husbands.  One  of  my  friends  has 
been  watching  a  pair  of  bluebirds  building.  The  male 
sat  around  for  a  week  without  bringing  in  a  feather. 
Then  one  day  he  was  seen  to  enter  the  hole,  after  his 
busy  mate  had  just  left  it,  and  carry  out  a  beakful  of 
grass  which  he  scattered  to  the  winds  in  pure  per- 
versity, criticising  her  bungling  work,  maybe  !  More 
likely  he  was  jealous. 

Chickadee  was  no  such  precious  fool  as  that.  He 
was  doing  something ;  trying  to  drown  his  regret  for 
the  departing  honeymoon  in  hard  labor,  not,  however, 
to  the  danger  of  his  health. 

I  sat  a  long  time  watching  the  work.  It  went  on  in 
perfect  silence,  not  a  chirp,  not  the  sound  of  a  flut- 

85 


of  tQt 

tering  wing.  The  swamp  along  whose  margin  the 
birds  were  building  had  not  a  joyous  atmosphere. 
Damp,  dim-shadowed,  and  secret,  it  seemed  to  have 
laid  its  spell  upon  the  birds.  Their  very  gray  and 
black  was  as  if  mixed  of  the  dusk,  and  of  the  gray, 
half-light  of  the  swamp ;  their  noiseless  coming  and 
going  was  like  the  slipping  to  and  fro  of  shadows. 
They  were  a  part  of  it  all,  and  that  sharing  was  their 
defense,  the  best  defense  they  knew. 

It  did  n't  save  their  nest,  however.  They  felt  and 
obeyed  the  spirit  of  the  swamp  in  their  own  conduct, 
but  the  swamp  did  not  tell  them  where  to  build.  It 
was  about  three  weeks  later  that  I  stopped  again 
under  the  pine  and  found  the  birch  stub  in  pieces 
upon  the  ground.  Some  robber  had  been  after  the 
eggs  and  had  brought  the  whole  house  tumbling  down. 
This  is  not  the  fate  of  all  such  birch-bark  houses. 
Now  and  again  they  escape ;  but  it  is  always  a  mat- 
ter for  wonder. 

I  was  following  an  old  disused  wood  road  once  when 
I  scared  a  robin  from  her  nest.  Her  mate  joined  her, 
and  together  they  raised  a  great  hubbub.  Immedi- 
ately a  chewink,  a  pair  of  vireos,  and  two  black  and 
white  warblers  joined  the  robins  in  their  din.  Then  a 

86 


chickadee  appeared.  He  (I  say  "he"  knowingly; 
and  here  he  quite  redeems  himself)  had  a  worm  in 
his  beak.  His  anxiety  seemed  so  real  that  I  began  to 
watch  him,  when,  looking  down  among  the  stones  for 
a  place  to  step,  what  should  I  see  but  his  mate  emerg- 
ing from  the  end  of  a  birch  stump  at  my  very  feet. 
She  had  heard  the  din  and  had  come  out  to  see  what 
it  was  all  about.  At  sight  of  her,  he  hastened  with 
his  worm,  brushing  my  face,  almost,  as  he  darted  to 
her  side.  She  took  it  sweetly,  for  she  knew  he  had 
intended  it  for  her.  But  how  do  I  know  that  ?  Per- 
haps he  meant  it  for  the  young!  There  were  no  young 
in  the  nest,  only  eight  eggs.  Even  after  the  young 
came  (there  were  eight  of  them  !),  and  when  life,  from 
daylight  to  dark,  was  one  ceaseless,  hurried  hunt  for 
worms,  I  saw  him  over  and  over  again  fly  to  her  side 
caressingly  and  tempt  her  to  eat. 

The  house  of  this  pair  did  not  fall.  How  could  it 
when  it  stood  precisely  two  and  a  half  feet  from  the 
ground !  But  that  it  was  n't  looted  is  due  to  the  sheer 
audacity  of  its  situation.  It  stood  alone,  against  the 
road,  so  close  that  the  hub  of  a  low  wheel  in  passing 
might  have  knocked  it  down.  Perhaps  a  hundred 
persons  had  brushed  it  in  going  by.  How  many  dogs 

87 


of 

and  cats  had  overlooked  it  no  one  can  say,  nor  how 
many  skunks  and  snakes  and  squirrels.  The  accident 
that  discovered  it  to  me  happened  apparently  to  no 
one  else,  and  I  was  friendly. 

Cutting  a  tiny  window  in  the  bark  just  above  the 
eggs,  I  looked  in  upon  the  little  people  every  day. 
I  watched  them  grow  and  fill  the  cavity  and  hang 
over  at  the  top.  I  was  there  the  day  they  forced  my 
window  open,  the  day  when  there  was  no  more  room 
at  the  top,  and  when,  at  the  call  of  their  parents,  one 
after  another  of  this  largest  and  sweetest  of  bird 
families  found  his  wings  and  flew  away  through  the 
woods. 


VI 


THE  snow  had  melted  from  the  river  meadows,  leav- 
ing them  flattened,  faded,  and  stained  with  mud,  —  a 
dull,  dreary  waste  in  the  gray  February.  I  had  stopped 
beside  a  tiny  bundle  of  bones  that  lay  in  the  matted 
grass  a  dozen  feet  from  a  ditch.  Here,  still  show- 
ing, was  the  narrow  path  along  which  the  bones  had 
dragged  themselves  ;  there  the  hole  by  which  they 
had  left  the  burrow  in  the  bank  of  the  ditch.  They 
had  crawled  out  in  this  old  runway,  then  turned  off 
a  little  into  the  heavy  autumn  grass  and  laid  them 
down.  The  rains  had  come  and  the  winter  snows. 
The  spring  was  breaking  now,  and  the  small  bundle, 
gently  loosened  and  uncovered,  was  whitening  on  the 
wide,  bare  meadow. 

89 


of 

I  had  recognized  the  bones  at  once  as  the  skeleton 
of  a  muskrat.  It  was  something  peculiar  in  the  way 
they  lay  that  had  caused  me  to  pause.  They  seemed 
outstretched,  as  if  composed  by  gentle  hands,  the  hands 
of  Sleep.  They  had  not  been  flung  down.  The  deli- 
cate ribs  had  fallen  in,  but  not  a  bone  was  broken 
or  displaced,  not  one  showed  the  splinter  of  shot,  or 
the  crack  that  might  have  been  made  by  a  steel  trap. 
No  violence  had  been  done  them.  They  had  been 
touched  by  nothing  rougher  than  the  snow.  Out 
into  the  hidden  runway  they  had  crept.  Death  had 
passed  them  here ;  but  no  one  else  in  all  the  winter 
months. 

The  creature  had  died — a  "natural"  death.  It  had 
starved,  while  a  hundred  acres  of  plenty  lay  round 
about.  Picking  up  the  skull,  I  found  the  jaws  locked 
together  as  if  they  were  a  single  solid  bone.  One  of 
the  two  incisor  teeth  of  the  upper  jaw  was  missing, 
and  apparently  had  never  developed.  The  opposite 
tooth  on  the  lower  jaw,  thus  unopposed  and  so  un- 
worn, had  grown  beyond  its  normal  height  up  into  the 
empty  socket  above,  then  on,  turning  outward  and 
piercing  the  cheek-bone  in  front  of  the  eye,  whence, 
curving  like  a  boar's  tusk,  it  had  slowly  closed  the 

90 


jaws  and  locked  them,  rigid,  set,  as  fixed  as  jaws  of 
stone. 

Death  had  lingered  cruelly.  At  first  the  animal  had 
been  able  to  gnaw;  but  as  the  tooth  curved  through 
the  bones  of  the  face  and  gradually  tightened  the 
jaws,  the  creature  got  less  and  less  to  eat,  until,  one 
day,  creeping  out  of  the  burrow  for  food,  the  poor 
wretch  was  unable  to  get  back. 

One  seldom  comes  upon  the  like  of  this.  It  is  com- 
moner than  we  think ;  but  it  is  usually  hidden  away 
and  quickly  over.  How  often  do  we  see  a  wild  thing 
sick,  —  a  bird  or  animal  suffering  from  an  accident,  or 
dying,  like  this  muskrat,  because  of  some  physical 
defect?  The  struggle  between  two  lives  for  life — the  4 
falling  of  the  weak  as  prey  to  the  strong — is  ever 
before  us;  but  this  single-handed  fight  between  the 
creature  and  Nature  is  a  far  rarer,  silenter  tragedy. 
Nature  is  too  swift,  too  merciless  to  allow  us  time 
for  sympathy.  It  was  she  who  taught  the  old  Roman 
to  take  away  his  weak  and  malformed  offspring  and 
expose  it  on  the  hills. 

There  is,  at  best,  scarcely  a  fighting  chance  in 
the  meadow.  Only  strength  and  craft  may  win.  The 
muskrat  with  the  missing  tooth  never  enters  the  race 


of 

at  all.  He  slinks  from  some  abandoned  burrow,  and, 
if  the  owl  and  mink  are  not  watching,  dies  alone  in 
the  grass,  and  we  rarely  know. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  impression  made  upon  me 
by  those  quiet  bones.  It  was  like  that  made  by  my 
first  visit  to  a  great  city  hospital,  —  out  of  the  busy, 
cheerful  street  into  a  surgical  ward,  where  the  sick 
and  injured  lay  in  long  white  lines.  We  tramp  the 
woods  and  meadows  and  never  step  from  the  sweet 
air  and  the  pure  sunlight  of  health  into  a  hospital. 
But  that  is  not  because  no  sict,  ill-formed,  or  in- 
jured are  there.  The  proportion  is  smaller  than 
among  us  humans,  and  for  very  good  reasons,  yet 
*  there  is  much  real  suffering,  and  to  come  upon  it,  as 
we  will,  now  and  then,  must  certainly  quicken  our 
understanding  and  deepen  our  sympathy  with  the 
life  out  of  doors. 

No  sensible  person  could  for  a  moment  believe 
the  animals  capable  of  suffering  as  a  human  being 
can  suffer,  or  that  there  is  any  such  call  for  our 
sympathy  from  them  as  from  our  human  neighbors. 
But  an  unselfish  sharing  of  the  life  of  the  fields  de- 
mands that  we  take  part  in  all  of  it,  —  and  all  of  it  is 
but  little  short  of  tragedy.  Nature  wears  a  brave 

92 


face.  Her  smile  is  ever  in  the  open,  her  laughter 
quick  and  contagious.  This  brave  front  is  no  mask. 
It  is  real.  Sunlight,  song,  color,  form,  and  fragrance 
are  real.  And  so  our  love  and  joy  in  Nature  is  real. 
Real,  also,  should  be  our  love  and  sorrow  with  Na- 
ture. For  do  I  share  fully  in  as  much  of  her  life  as 
even  the  crow  lives  as  long  as  I  think  of  the  creature 
only  with  admiration  for  his  cunning  or  with  Wrath 
for  his  destruction  of  my  melons  and  corn  ? 

A  crow  has  his  solemn  moments.  He  frequently 
knows  fear,,  pain,  hunger,  accident,  and  disease ;  he 
knows  something  very  like  affection  and  love.  For 
all  that,  he  is  a  mere  crow.  But  a  mere  crow  is  no 
mean  thing.  Few  of  us,  indeed,  are  ourselves,  and 
as  much  besides  as  a  mere  crow.  A  real  love,  how- 
ever, will  give  us  part  in  all  of  his  existence.  We  will 
forage  and  fight  with  him  ;  we  will  parley  and  play ; 
and  when  the  keen  north  winds  find  him  in  the 
frozen  pines,  we  will  suffer,  too. 

With  Nature  as  mere  waters,  fields,  and  skies,  it  is, 
perhaps,  impossible  for  us  to  sorrow.  She  is  too  self- 
sufficient,  too  impersonal.  She  asks,  or  compels, 
everything  except  tears.  But  when  she  becomes 
birds  and  beasts,  —  a  little  world  of  individuals 

93 


of 

among  whom  you  are  only  one  of  a  different  kind, 
—  then  all  the  others,  no  matter  their  kind,  are 
earth-born  companions  and  fellow  mortals. 

Here  are  the  meadow  voles.  I  know  that  my  hay 
crop  is  shorter  every  year  for  them,  —  a  very  little 
shorter.  And  I  can  look  with  satisfaction  at  a  cat 
carrying  a  big  bobtailed  vole  out  of  my  mowing. 
The  voles  are  rated,  along  with  other  mice,  as  injuri- 
ous to  man.  I  have  an  impulse  to  plant  both  of  my 
precious  feet  upon  every  one  that  stirs  in  its  run- 
way. 

If  that  feeling  was  habitual  once,  it  is  so  no  longer ; 
for  now  it  is  only  when  the  instincts  of  the  farmer 
get  the  better  of  me  that  I  spring  at  this  quiet  stir 
in  the  grass.  Perhaps,  long  ago,  my  forbears  wore 
claws,  like  pussy ;  and,  perhaps  (there  is  n't  the 
slightest  doubt),  I  should  develop  claws  if  I  con- 
tinued to  jump  at  every  mouse  in  the  grass  because 
he  is  a  mouse,  and  because  I  have  a  little  patch  of 
mucky  land  in  hay. 

One  day  I  came  upon  two  of  my  voles  struggling  in 
the  water.  They  were  exhausted  and  well-nigh  dead. 
I  helped  them  out  as  I  should  have  helped  out  any 
other  creature,  and  having  saved  them,  why,  what 

94 


could  I  do  but  let  them  go — even  into  my  own 
meadow?  This  has  happened  several  times. 

When  the  drought  dries  the  meadow,  the  voles 
come  to  the  deep,  walled  spring  at  the  upper  end, 
apparently  to  drink.  The  water  usually  trickles  over 
the  curb,  but  in  a  long  dry  spell  it  shrinks  a  foot  or 
more  below  the  edge,  and  the  voles,  once  within  for 
their  drink,  cannot  get  out.  Time  and  time  again  I 
had  fished  them  up,  until  I  thought  to  leave  a  board 
slanting  down  to  the  water,  so  that  they  could  climb 
back  to  the  top. 

It  is  stupid  and  careless  to  drown  thus.  The  voles 
are  blunderers.  White-footed  mice  and  house  mice 
are  abundant  in  the  stumps  and  grass  of  the  vicinity, 
but  they  never  tumble  into  the  spring.  Still,  I  am 
partly  responsible  for  the  voles,  for  I  walled  up  the 
spring  and  changed  it  into  this  trap.  I  owe  them 
the  drink  and  the  plank,  for  certainly  there  are  rights 
of  mice,  as  well  as  of  men,  in  this  meadow  of  mine, 
where  I  do  little  but  mow.  But  even  if  they  have  no 
rights,  surely 

A  daimen  icker  in  a  thrave 
'S  a  sma'  request 

for  such  of  them  as  the  foxes,  cats,  skunks,  snakes, 

95 


of  tQ 

hawks,  and  owls  leave!  Rights  or  no,  hay  or  no,  I 
don't  jump  at  my  meadow  mice  any  more,  for  fear  of 
killing  one  who  has  taken  a  cup  of  cold  water  from 
me  off  the  plank,  or  has  had  my  helping  hand  out  of 
the  depths  of  the  spring. 

It  is  wholesome  to  be  the  good  Samaritan  to  a 
meadow  mouse,  to  pour  out,  even  waste,  a  little  of 
the  oil  and  wine  of  sympathy  on  the  humblest  of  our 
needy  neighbors. 

Here  are  the  chimney  swallows.  One  can  look  with 
complacency,  with  gratitude,  indeed,  upon  the  swal- 
lows of  other  chimneys,  as  they  hawk  in  the  sky  ;  yet, 
when  the  little  creatures,  so  useful,  but  so  uncombed 
and  unfumigated,  set  up  their  establishments  myour 
chimney,  to  the  jeopardy  of  the  whole  house,  then 
you  need  an  experience  like  mine. 

I  had  had  a  like  experience  years  before,  when  the 
house  did  not  belong  to  me.  Now,  however,  the 
house  was  mine,  and  if  it  became  infested  because  of 
the  swallows,  I  could  not  move  away ;  so  I  felt  like 
burning  them  in  the  chimney,  bag  and  baggage. 
There  were  four  nests,  as  nearly  as  I  could  make 
out,  and,  from  the  frequent  squeakings,  I  knew  they 
were  all  filled  with  young.  Then  one  day,  when  the 

96 


birds  were  feathered  and  nearly  ready  to  fly,  there 
came  a  rain  that  ran  wet  far  down  the  sooty  chimney, 
loosened  the  mortar  of  the  nests,  and  sent  them 
crashing  into  the  fireplace. 

Some  of  the  young  birds  were  killed  outright ;  the 
others  were  at  my  mercy,  flung  upon  me,  — helpless, 
wailing  infants!  Of  course  I  made  it  comfortable 
for  them  on  the  back-log,  and  let  their  mothers  flut- 
ter down  unhindered  to  feed  them.  Had  I  under- 
stood the  trick,  I  would  have  hawked  for  them  and 
helped  feed  them  myself. 

They  made  a  great  thunder  in  the  chimney ;  they 
rattled  down  into  the  living-room  a  little  soot ;  but 
nothing  further  came  of  it.  We  were  not  quaran- 
tined. On  the  contrary,  we  had  our  reward,  accord- 
ing to  promise ;  for  it  was  an  extremely  interesting 
event  to  us  all.  It  dispelled  some  silly  qualms,  it 
gave  us  intimate  part  in  a  strange  small  life,  so 
foreign,  yet  so  closely  linked  to  our  own,  and  it 
made  us  pause  with  wonder  that  even  our  empty, 
sooty  chimney  could  be  made  use  of  by  Nature  to 
our  great  benefit. 

I  wonder  if  the  nests  of  the  chimney  swallows 
came  tumbling  down  when  the  birds  used  to  build  in 

97 


of  f§ 

caves  and  hollow  trees  ?  It  is  a  most  extraordinary 
change,  this  change  from  the  trees  to  the  chimneys, 
and  it  does  not  seem  to  have  been  accompanied  by 
an  increase  of  architectural  wisdom  necessary  to 
meet  all  the  contingencies  of  the  new  hollow.  The 
mortar  or  glue,  which,  I  imagine,  held  firmly  in  the 
empty  trees,  will  not  mix  with  the  chimney  soot,  so 
that  the  nest,  especially  when  crowded  with  young, 
is  easily  loosened  by  the  rain,  and  is  sometimes  even 
broken  away  by  the  slight  wing-stroke  of  a  descend- 
ing swallow,  or  by  the  added  weight  of  a  parent  bird 
as  it  settles  with  food. 

We  little  realize  how  frequent  fear  is  among  the 
birds  and  animals,  nor  how  often  it  proves  fatal.  A 
situation  which  would  have  caused  no  trouble  ordi- 
narily, becomes  through  sudden  fright  a  tangle  or  a 
trap.  I  have  known  many  a  quail  to  bolt  into  a  fast 
express  train  and  fall  dead.  Last  winter  I  left  the 
large  door  of  the  barn  open,  so  that  my  flock  of  j un- 
cos could  feed  inside  upon  the  floor.  They  found 
their  way  into  the  hayloft,  and  went  up  and  down 
freely.  On  two  or  three  occasions  I  happened  in  so 
suddenly  that  they  were  thoroughly  frightened,  and 
flew  madly  into  the  cupola  to  escape  through  the 

98 


(ttli00in3 

windows.  They  beat  against  the  glass  until  utterly 
dazed,  and  would  have  perished  there,  had  I  not 
climbed  up  later  and  brought  them  down.  So  thou- 
sands of  the  migrating  birds  perish  yearly  by  flying 
wildly  against  the  dazzling  lanterns  of  the  light- 
houses, and  thousands  more  lose  their  way  in  the 
thick  darkness  of  the  stormy  nights,  or  are  blown 
out  of  their  course,  and  drift  away  to  sea. 

Hasty,  careless,  miscalculated  movements  are  not 
as  frequent  among  the  careful  wild  folk  as  among 
us,  perhaps  ;  but  there  is  abundant  evidence  of  their 
occasional  occurrence  and  of  their  sometimes  fatal 
results. 

Several  instances  are  recorded  of  birds  that  have 
been  tangled  in  the  threads  of  their  nests ;  and  one 
case  of  a  bluebird  that  was  caught  in  the  flying 
meshes  of  an  oriole's  nest  into  which  it  had  been 
spying. 

I  once  found  the  mummied  body  of  a  chippy  twist- 
ing and  swinging  in  the  leafless  branches  of  a  peach 
tree.  The  little  creature  was  suspended  in  a  web  of 
horsehair  about  two  inches  below  the  nest.  It  looked 
as  if  she  had  brought  a  snarled  bunch  of  the  hair 
and  left  it  loose  in  the  twigs.  Later  on,  a  careless 

99 


of  t$ 

step  and  her  foot  was  fast,  when  every  frantic  effort 
for  freedom  only  tangled  her  the  worse.  In  the  nest 
above  were  four  other  tiny  mummies,  —  a  double 
tragedy  that  might  with  care  have  been  averted. 

A  similar  fate  befell  a  song  sparrow  that  I  dis- 
covered hanging  dead  upon  a  barbed-wire  fence.  By 
some  chance  it  had  slipped  a  foot  through  an  open 
place  between  the  two  twisted  strands,  and  then,  flut- 
tering along,  had  wedged  the  leg  and  broken  it  in 
the  struggle  to  escape. 

We  have  all  held  our  breath  at  the  hazardous  trav- 
eling of  the  squirrels  in  the  treetops.  What  other 
animals  take  such  risks,  —  leaping  at  dizzy  heights 
from  bending  limbs  to  catch  the  tips  of  limbs  still 
smaller,  saving  themselves  again  and  again  by  the 
merest  chance. 

But  luck  sometimes  fails.  My  brother,  a  careful 
watcher  in  the  woods,  was  hunting  on  one  occasion, 
when  he  saw  a  gray  squirrel  miss  its  footing  in  a 
tree  and  fall,  breaking  its  neck  upon  a  log  beneath. 

I  have  frequently  known  them  to  fall  short  dis- 
tances, and  once  I  saw  a  red  squirrel  come  to  grief 
like  the  gray  squirrel  above.  He  was  scurrying 
through  the  tops  of  some  lofty  pitch  pines,  a  little 

100 


hurried  and  flustered  at  sight  of  me,  and  nearing 
the  end  of  a  high  branch  was  in  the  act  of  springing, 
when  the  dead  tip  cracked  under  him  and  he  came 
tumbling  headlong.  The  height  must  have  been 
forty  feet,  so  that  before  he  reached  the  ground  he 
had  righted  himself,  —  his  tail  out  and  legs  spread, 
—  but  the  fall  was  too  great.  He  hit  the  earth  with 
a  dull  thud,  and  before  I  could  reach  him  lay  dead 
upon  the  needles,  with  blood  oozing  from  his  eyes 
and  nostrils. 

Unhoused  and  often  unsheltered,  the  wild  things 
suffer  as  we  hardly  yet  understand.  No  one  can  esti- 
mate the  deaths  of  a  year  from  severe  cold,  heavy 
storms,  high  winds  and  tides.  I  have  known  the  nests 
of  a  whole  colony  of  gulls  and  terns  to  be  swept  away 
in  a  great  storm  ;  and  I  have  seen  the  tides,  over 
and  over,  flood  the  inlet  marshes,  and  drown  out 
the  nests  in  the  grass,  —  those  of  the  clapper-rails 
by  thousands. 

I  remember  a  late  spring  storm  that  came  with 
the  returning  redstarts  and,  in  my  neighborhood, 
killed  many  of  them.  Toward  evening  of  that  day 
one  of  the  little  black  and  orange  voyageurs  flut- 
tered against  the  window  and  we  let  him  in,  wet, 

101 


of  f§ 

chilled,  and  so  exhausted  that  for  a  moment  he  lay 
on  his  back  in  my  open  palm.  Soon  after  there  was 
another  soft  tapping  at  the  window,  —  and  two  little 
redstarts  were  sharing  our  cheer  and  drying  their 
butterfly  wings  in  our  warmth. 

During  the  summer  of  1903  one  of  the  commonest 
of  the  bird  calls  about  the  farm  was  the  whistle  of 
the  quails.  A  covey  roosted  down  the  hillside  within 
fifty  yards  of  the  house.  Then  came  the  winter,  — 
such  a  winter  as  the  birds  had  never  known.  Since 
then,  just  once  have  we  heard  the  whistle  of  a  quail, 
and  that,  perhaps,  was  the  call  of  one  which  a  game 
protective  association  had  liberated  in  the  woods 
about  two  miles  away. 

The  birds  and  animals  are  not  as  weather-wise  as 
we ;  they  cannot  foretell  as  far  ahead  nor  provide  as 
certainly  against  need,  despite  the  popular  notion  to 
the  contrary. 

We  point  to  the  migrating  birds,  to  the  muskrat 
houses,  and  the  hoards  of  the  squirrels,  and  say, 
"  How  wise  and  far-sighted  these  nature-taught  chil- 
dren are ! "  True,  they  are,  but  only  for  conditions 
that  are  normal.  Their  wisdom  does  not  cover  the 
exceptional.  The  gray  squirrels  did  not  provide  for 

102 


the  unusually  hard  weather  of  the  winter  of  1904. 
Three  of  them  from  the  woodlot  came  begging  of 
me,  and  lived  on  my  wisdom,  not  on  their  own. 

Consider  the  ravens,  that  neither  sow  nor  reap, 
that  have  neither  storehouse  nor  barn,  yet  they  are 
fed,  —  but  not  always.  Indeed,  there  are  few  of  our 
winter  birds  that  go  hungry  so  often,  and  that  die  in 
so  great  numbers  for  lack  of  food  and  shelter,  as  the 
crows. 

After  severe  and  protracted  cold,  with  a  snow- 
covered  ground,  a  crow-roost  looks  like  a  battlefield, 
so  thick  lie  the  dead  and  wounded.  Morning  after 
morning  the  flock  goes  over  to  forage  in  the  frozen 
fields,  and  night  after  night  returns  hungrier,  weaker, 
and  less  able  to  resist  the  cold.  Now,  as  the  dark- 
ness falls,  a  bitter  wind  breaks  loose  and  sweeps 
down  upon  the  pines. 

List'ning  the  doors  an'  winnocks  rattle, 
I  thought  me  on  the  owrie  cattle, 

and  how  often  I  have  thought  me  on  the  crows  biding 
the  night  yonder  in  the  moaning  pines  !  So  often,  as 
a  boy,  and  with  so  real  an  awe,  have  I  watched  them 
returning  at  night,  that  the  crows  will  never  cease 
flying  through  my  wintry  sky,  —  an  endless  line  of 

103 


of  $ 

wavering  black  figures,  weary,  retreating  figures, 
beating  over  in  the  early  dusk. 

To-night  another  wild  storm  sweeps  across  the 
January  fields.  All  the  afternoon  the  crows  have 
been  going  over,  and  at  five  o'clock  are  still  passing 
though  the  darkness  settles  rapidly.  Now  it  is  eight, 
and  the  long  night  is  but  just  begun.  The  storm 
is  increasing.  The  wind  shrieks  about  the  house, 
whirling  the  fine  snow  in  hissing  eddies  past  the 
corners  and  driving  it  on  into  long,  curling  crests 
across  the  fields.  I  can  hear  the  roar  as  the  wind 
strikes  the  shoal  of  pines  where  the  fields  roll  into 
the  woods,  —  a  vast  surf  sound,  but  softer  and  higher, 
with  a  wail  like  the  wail  of  some  vast  heart  in  pain. 

I  can  see  the  tall  trees  rock  and  sway  with  their 
burden  of  dark  forms.  As  close  together  as  they  can 
crowd  on  the  bending  limbs  cling  the  crows,  their 
breasts  turned  all  to  the  storm.  With  crops  empty 
and  bodies  weak,  they  rise  and  fall  in  the  cutting, 
ice-filled  wind  for  thirteen  hours  of  night ! 

Is  it  a  wonder  that  the  life  fires  burn  low  ?  that 
the  small  flames  flicker  and  go  out  ? 


VII 


of 


THE  shad-bush  is  open  !  My  bees  have  seen  the 
sign.  They  are  dropping  down  upon  the  alighting- 
boards  of  their  hives  and  running  with  little  bags  of 
gold  into  the  still  half-closed  entrances.  During  the 
sunny  hours  of  the  last  three  weeks  there  has  been 
a  quiet  buzzing  about  the  hives  :  the  bees  have  been 
visiting  the  early  alders,  the  soft  maples,  and  the 
dusty-catkined  willows  ;  but  not  before  to-day,  the 
first  day  of  the  blowing  shad-bush,  have  things  been 
busy  at  the  hives,  —  have  they  hummed. 

Off  along  the  meadows  I  can  see  large  patches  of 
garnet  against  the  purple  of  the  sky,  —  the  bloom 
of  the  red  maples.  As  I  approach,  a  soft  murmur 
around  and  through  the  misty  garnet  fills  the  air, 
like  the  murmur  of  a  million  tiny  tongues.  Nearer 

105 


of 

still,  and  I  can  see  the  bees.  Here  is  where  they 
are  getting  their  gold.  But  not  all  of  it.  Some  of  it 
to-day  is  coming  from  the  marsh  marigolds. 

Early  in  April,  before  the  shad-bush  had  opened, 
or  a  bee  had  ventured  to  the  meadows,  I  picked  the 
first  hardy  blossom  of  the  marigolds  out  of  icy  water, 
out  of  mud  that  had  barely  thawed.  A  token  this, 
a  promise  ;  but  not  the  sure  sign  of  spring.  The  bees 
did  not  see  it ;  they  were  waiting,  like  me,  for  the 
shad-bush.  So  were  the  marigolds,  for  to-day  the  low, 
wet  edge  of  the  meadow  ditch  is  all  aglow  with  the 
shining  of  their  gold,  which  the  bees  are  pocketing  by 
the  thighful.  Among  the  "flowers,"  the  marigolds 
are  the  first  here  to  offer  a  harvest  for  the  hives. 

The  procession  is  under  way.  The  assembling  be- 
gan weeks  ago,  with  the  March  hepatica,  the  stray 
April  arbutus,  windflower,  spice-bush,  and  bloodroot. 
There  were  saxifrage  and  everlasting  out,  too  ;  but 
they  all  came  singly  and  timidly.  There  was  no  move- 
ment of  the  flowers  until  the  shad-bush  opened.  Now 
the  marigolds  appear  in  companies,  the  windflowers 
drift  together,  and  the  hepaticas,  leading  the  line, 
make  a  show.  The  procession  of  the  flowers  has 
started  ;  spring  is  here. 

106 


of 

My  spring,  I  should  have  said.  Your  spring  came 
long  ago,  perhaps,  or  still  delays.  "The  dandelion 
tells  me  when  to  look  for  the  swallow,  the  dog-tooth 
violet  when  to  expect  the  wood  thrush,  and  when 
I  have  found  the  wake-robin  in  bloom  I  know  the 
season  is  fairly  inaugurated.  With  me  this  flower  is 
associated,  not  merely  with  the  awakening  of  Robin, 
for  he  has  been  awake  some  weeks,  but  with  the 
universal  awakening  and  rehabilitation  of  Nature." 

I  watch  for  the  sign  of  the  shad-bush.  Spring ! 
There  is  the  smell  of  spring  in  the  yellow  spice- 
bush  ;  the  sound  of  spring  in  the  trills  of  the  hylas ; 
the  color  of  spring  in  the  blue  of  the  hepatica.  A 
February  rain  spatters  your  face  with  spring  ;  the 
wild  geese  trumpet  spring  in  the  gray  skies  as  they 
pass ;  the  bluebird  brings  spring  in  spite  of  your 
fears  and  the  weather :  - 

All  white  and  still  lie  stream  and  hill  — 

The  winter  cold  and  drear ! 
When  from  the  skies,  a  bluebird  flies 

And  —  spring  is  here  ! 

True  enough.  But  then  suddenly  the  bluebird  dis- 
appears ;  a  heavy  snowstorm  sets  in  (as  happened 
not  many  springs  ago),  and  thousands  of  the  birds 

107 


perish.    Spring  was  here.    It  has  gone  again.    And 
so  it  will  come  and  go  until  the  shad-bush  blooms  — 
for  me. 

You  will  not  miss  one  of  the  returning  birds,  not 
even  the  wild  geese ;  not  one  of  the  early  flowers, 
either,  by  waiting  for  the  shad-bush.  The  skunk- 
cabbage  and  pussy-willow  are  still  in  blossom ;  and 
still  in  the  woods  and  fields  is  the  smell  of  the  soil, 
—  that  fragrance,  that  essence  which  is  the  breath  of 
the  wakening  earth.  You  can  yet  taste  it  on  the  lips 
of  the  hepatica,  the  arbutus,  and  bloodroot.  It  still 
lingers  on  the  early  catkins,  too,  —  a  strangely  rare 
and  delicate  odor,  that  is  not  of  the  flowers  at  all, 
but  of  the  earth,  and  sweeter  than  any  perfume  that 
the  summer  can  distill. 

It  has  been  a  slow,  unwilling  season  until  to-day, 
so  slow  that  the  green  still  shows  richest  in  the 
sheltered  meadows,  and  the  lively  color  on  the  rocky 
slope  that  runs  up  from  my  tiny  river  is  largely  the 
color  of  mosses  and  Christmas  ferns.  Here  is  a 
stretch  of  southern  exposure,  however,  and  here  are 
spots  where  springtime  came  weeks  ago.  Already 
the  dog-tooth  violets  are  out  in  a  sunny  saucer  be- 
tween the  rocks  ;  just  above  them,  on  an  unshaded 

1 08 


of 

shelf,  is  a  patch  of  saxifrage,  and  close  at  hand 
among  the  clefts,  their  "  honey  pitcher  upside  down," 
swing  the  first  of  my  columbines. 

Yet  Spring  does  not  come  thus  by  spots  ;  she 
does  not  crawl  out  and  sun  herself  like  a  lizard.  The 
columbine  seeks  the  sun,  but  the  hepaticas  came  up 
and  opened  their  exquisite  eyes  in  the  deepest,  damp- 
est shadows  of  the  woods.  I  have  seen  them  and 
the  lingering  snowdrifts  together.  Many  of  them  are 
never  touched  with  a  sunbeam,  their  warmth  and  life 
coming  from  within,  from  a  store  saved  through 
the  winter,  rather  than  from  without.  Here  under 
the  mat  of  fallen  leaves  and  winter  snow  they  have 
kept  enough  of  the  summer  to  make  a  spring. 

The  fires  of  summer  are  never  out.  They  are 
only  banked  in  the  winter,  smouldering  always 
under  the  snow,  and  quick  to  brighten  and  burst 
into  blaze.  There  came  a  warm  day  in  January,  and 
across  my  thawing  path  crawled  a  woolly  bear  cater- 
pillar, a  vanessa  butterfly  flitted  through  the  woods, 
and  the  j  uncos  sang.  That  night  a  howling  snow- 
storm swept  out  of  the  north.  The  coals  were  covered 
again.  So  they  kindled  and  darkened,  until  to-day 
they  leap  from  the  ashes  of  winter,  a  pure,  thin 

109 


of 

blaze  in  the  shad-bush,  to  burn  higher  and  hotter 
across  the  summer,  to  flicker  and  die  away,  a  line  of 
yellow  embers  in  the  weird  witch-hazel  of  the  autumn. 

At  the  sign  of  the  shad-bush  the  doors  of  my 
springtime  swing  wide  open.  My  birds  are  back, 
my  turtles  are  out,  my  squirrels  and  woodchucks 
show  themselves,  my  garden  is  ready  to  plough  and 
plant.  There  is  not  a  stretch  of  woodland  or  meadow 
now  that  shows  a  trace  of  winter.  Over  the  pasture 
the  bluets  are  beginning  to  drift,  as  if  the  haze,  on 
the  distant  hills,  floating  down  in  the  night,  had 
been  caught  in  the  dew-wet  grass.  They  wash  the 
field  to  its  borders  in  their  delicate  azure  hue. 

Along  with  the  bluets  ("innocence"  we  should 
always  call  them),  under  the  open  sky,  there  unroll 
in  .the  wet  shaded  bottoms  of  the  maple  swamps  the 
pointed  arum  leaves  of  the  Jacks,  or  Indian  turnips. 
How  they  fight  for  room  !  There  are  patches  where 
all  the  pews  are  pulpits,  with  some  of  the  preachers 
standing  three  deep. 

Now  why  should  there  be  such  a  scramble  for 
place  among  the  Jacks,  while  just  above  them  in  the 
dry  woods  the  large  showy  lady's-slipper  opens  in 
isolated  splendor  ?  Here  is  one,  yonder  another,  with 

no 


room  between  for  a  thousand.  Occasionally  you  will 
see  a  dozen  together,  though  not  in  a  crowd ;  but 
more  often  the  solitary  blossom  opens  alone  and  far 
removed  from  any  of  its  kind. 

The  lady's-slippers,  however,  are  really  social  com- 
pared with  the  arbutus.  Here  is  a  flower  that  is 
naturally  tribal,  —  bound  together  by  common  root- 
stalks,  trailing  shrubby  plants  that  seem  free  to 
possess  the  earth.  They  were  doubtless  here  in  the 
soil  before  the  Pilgrim  came.  The  angels  planted 
them,  I  am  sure,  for  they  smell  of  a  celestial  garden. 
The  paths  of  heaven  are  carpeted  with  them,  not 
paved  with  gold.  But  something  is  the  matter  with 
this  earthly  soil.  They  grow  just  where  they  were 
originally  planted  and  nowhere  else.  There  was  a 
patch  set  in  the  woods  three  quarters  of  a  mile,  as 
the  crow  flies,  from  my  front  door.  That  was  several 
millenniums  ago.  It  is  there  still,  a  patch  as  big  as 
my  hat.  There  are  other  scattered  bits  of  it  beyond, 
but  none  any  nearer  to  me,  yet  the  soil  seems  the 
same,  and  there  are  woods  all  the  way  between. 

Were  it  as  common  as  the  violet,  perhaps  some  of 
its  sweetness  would  be  lost  upon  us.  After  all,  the 
heavenly  streets  may  be  paved  with  gold,  and  instead 

in 


of  t$t 

of  a  carpet  of  arbutus,  we  shall  find  patches  of  it 
only,  hidden  away  under  the  fallen  leaves  of  the 
Elysian  groves.  For  we  shall  need  to  get  out  of  even 
the  celestial  city  into  the  open  fields  and  woods, 
and  I  can  think  of  nothing  so  likely  to  draw  us  away 
from  our  mansions  and  beyond  the  pearly  gates  as 
the  chance  to  go  "May-flowering." 

And,  even  here  below,  among  the  unransomed 
souls  of  Boston,  when  Mayflower-time  arrives,  you 
may  see  young  men  and  maidens,  children  and 
grandfathers,  trooping  out  to  the  woods  for  a  hand- 
ful of  the  flowers.  And  up  from  the  Cape,  to  those 
who  cannot  go  into  the  woods,  the  flowers,  them- 
selves, come,  —  tight,  naked  bunches,  stripped  of  all 
but  the  pink  of  their  faces  and  the  sweet  of  their 
souls.  They  possess  every  quarter  of  the  city.  Jew 
and  Gentile  sell  them,  Greek  and  Barbarian  buy 
them,  as  they  buy  and  sell  no  other  wild  flower. 

Why,  then,  is  it  not  the  arbutus,  instead  of  the 
shad-bush,  that  spells  for  me  the  spring  ?  I  don't 
know ;  unless  it  is  because  the  shad-bush  takes 
deeper  hold  upon  my  imagination.  It  certainly  is 
not  its  form,  or  color,  or  fragrance,  — though  it  has 
grace,  —  an  airy,  misty,  half-substantial  shape,  a 

112 


of 

wraith  in  the  leafless  woods ;  it  has  odor,  too,  and 
color.  But  it  is  something  more  than  all  of  these 
that  the  soft  blowing  shad-bush  means  to  me.  Per- 
haps the  something  is  in  its  name,  —  because  it  links 
my  inland  round  with  the  round  of  the  sea ;  and 
because  it  links  this  present  narrowing  round  with 
the  wide-winging  round  of  the  past. 

At  the  sign  of  the  shad-bush  I  know  the  fish  are 
running,  — the  sturgeon  up  the  Delaware;  the  shad 
into  Cohansey  Creek ;  and  through  Five-Forks  Sluice, 
these  soft,  stirring  nights,  I  know  the  catfish  are 
slipping.  Is  there  any  boy  now  in  Lupton's  Mead- 
ows to  watch  them  come  ?  to  listen  in  the  moonlit 
quiet  for  the  splashy  splash,  as  the  fish  pass  up 
through  the  main  ditch  toward  the  dam  ? 

At  the  sign  of  the  shad-bush  how  swiftly  the  tides 
of  life  rise  !  how  mysteriously  their  currents  run ! 
drifting,  flying,  flowing,  creeping  —  colors,  perfumes, 
forms,  and  voices  —  across  the  heavens,  over  the 
earth,  and  down  the  deep,  dim  aisles  of  the  sea !  and 
down  the  deep,  dim  aisles  of  our  memories. 


VIII 


I  WAS  hurry  ing  across  Boston  Common.  Two  or  three 
hundred  others  were  hurrying  with  me.  But  ahead,  at 
the  union  of  several  paths,  was  a  crowd,  standing  still. 
I  kept  hurrying  on,  not  to  join  the  crowd,  but  simply 
to  keep  up  the  hurry.  The  crowd  was  not  standing 
still,  it  was  a-hurrying,  too,  scattering  as  fast  as  it 
gathered,  and  as  it  scattered  I  noticed  that  it  wore  a 
smile.  I  hastened  up,  pushed  in,  as  I  had  done  a  score 
of  times  on  the  Common,  and  got  my  glimpse  of  the 
show.  It  was  not  a  Mormon  preaching,  not  a  single- 
taxer,  not  a  dog  fight.  It  was  Billy,  a  gray  squirrel, 
taking  peanuts  out  of  a  bootblack's  pocket.  And  every 

114 


(Ttature  QTloi^ment 

age,  sex,  sort,  and  condition  of  Bostonian  came  around 
to  watch  the  little  beast  shuck  the  nuts  and  bury  them 
singly  in  the  grass  of  the  Common. 

"Ain't  he  a  cute  little  cuss,  mister?"  said  the  boy 
of  the  brush,  feeling  the  bottom  of  his  empty  pocket, 
and  looking  up  into  the  prosperous  face  of  Calumet 
and  Hecla  at  his  side.  C.  and  H.  smiled,  slipped  some- 
thing into  the  boy's  hand  with  which  to  buy  another 
pocketful  of  peanuts  for  Billy,  and  hurried  down  to 
State  Street. 

This  crowd  on  the  Common  is  nothing  exceptional. 
It  happens  every  day,  and  everywhere,  the  wide  coun- 
try over.  We  are  all  stopping  to  watch,  to  feed,  and  — 
to  smile.  The  longest,  most  far-reaching  pause  in  our 
hurrying  American  life  to-day  is  this  halt  to  look  at 
the  out-of-doors,  this  attempt  to  share  its  life ;  and 
nothing  more  significant  is  being  added  to  our  Amer- 
ican character  than  the  resulting  thoughtfulness,  sym- 
pathy, and  simplicity,  — the  smile  on  the  faces  of  the 
crowd  hurrying  over  the  Common. 

Whether  one  will  or  not,  he  is  caught  up  by  this 
nature  movement  and  set  adrift  in  the  fields.  It  may, 
indeed,  be  "adrift  "  for  him  until  he  gets  thankfully 
back  to  the  city.  "It  was  a  raw  November  day," 


of  t 

wrote  one  of  these  new  nature  students,  who  hap- 
pened also  to  be  a  college  student,  "  and  we  went 
for  our  usual  Saturday's  birding  into  the  woods. 
The  chestnuts  were  ripe,  and  we  gathered  a  peck 
between  us.  On  our  way  home,  we  discovered  a 
small  bird  perched  upon  a  cedar  tree  with  a  worm  in 
its  beak.  It  was  a  hummingbird,  and  after  a  little 
searching  we  found  its  tiny  nest  close  up  against  the 
trunk  of  the  cedar,  full  of  tiny  nestlings  just  ready 
to  fly." 

This  is  what  they  find,  many  of  these  who  are 
caught  up  by  the  movement  toward  the  fields  ;  but 
not  all  of  them.  A  little  five-year-old  from  the  village 
came  out  to  see  me  recently,  and  while  playing  in  the 
orchard  she  brought  me  five  flowers,  called  them  by 
their  right  names,  and  told  me  how  they  grew.  Down 
in  the  loneliest  marshes  of  Delaware  Bay  I  know  a 
lighthouse  keeper  and  his  solitary  neighbor,  a  farmer  : 
both  have  been  touched  by  this  nature  spirit ;  both 
are  interested,  informed,  and  observant.  The  farmer 
there,  on  the  old  Zane's  Place,  is  no  man  of  books,  like 
the  rector  of  Selborne,  but  he  is  a  man  of  birds  and 
beasts,  of  limitless  marsh  and  bay  and  sky,  of  ever- 
lasting silence  and  wideness  and  largeness  and  eter- 

116 


(ttlownttnf 


nal  solitude.  He  could  write  a  Natural  History  of  the 
Maurice  River  Marshes. 

These  are  not  rare  cases.  The  nature  books,  the 
nature  magazines,  the  nature  teachers,  are  directing 
us  all  to  the  out-of-doors.  I  subscribe  to  a  farm  jour- 
nal (club  rates,  twenty-five  cents  a  year  !)  in  which  an 
entire  page  is  devoted  to  "  nature  studies,"  while  the 
whole  paper  is  remarkably  fresh  and  odorous  of 
the  real  fields.  In  the  city,  on  my  way  to  and  from 
the  station,  I  pass  three  large  bookstores,  and  from 
March  until  July  each  of  these  shops  has  a  big  window 
given  over  almost  continuously  to  "nature  books."  I 
have  before  me  from  one  of  these  shops  a  little  cata- 
logue of  nature  books  —  "a  select  list  "  —  for  1907, 
containing  233  titles,  varying  in  kind  all  the  way  from 
"  The  Tramp's  Handbook  "  to  one  (to  a  dozen)  on  the 
very  stable  subject  of  "The  Farmstead."  These  are 
all  distinctively  "nature  books,"  books  with  an  appeal 
to  sentiment  as  well  as  to  sense,  and  very  unlike  the 
earlier  desiccated,  unimaginative  treatises. 

There  are  a  multitude  of  other  signs  that  show  as 
clearly  as  the  nature  books  how  full  and  strong  is 
this  tide  that  sets  toward  the  open  fields  and  woods. 
There  are  as  many  and  as  good  evidences,  too,  of  the 

117 


of 

genuineness  of  this  interest  in  the  out-of-doors.  It 
may  be  a  fad  just  now  to  adopt  abandoned  farms,  to 
attend  parlor  lectures  on  birds,  and  to  possess  a  how- 
to-know  library.  It  is  pathetic  to  see  "  nature  study" 
taught  by  schoolma'ams  who  never  did  and  who  never 
will  climb  a  rail  fence ;  it  is  sad,  to  speak  softly,  to 
have  the  makers  of  certain  animal  books  preface  the 
stories  with  a  declaration  of  their  absolute  truth  ;  it  is 
passing  sad  that  the  unnatural  natural  history,  the 
impossible  out-of-doors,  of  some  of  the  recent  nature 
books,  should  have  been  created.  But  fibs  and  failures 
and  impossibilities  aside,  there  still  remains  the  thing 
itself,  —  the  widespread  turning  to  nature,  and  the 
deep,  vital  need  to  turn. 

The  note  of  sincerity  is  clear,  however,  in  most  of 
our  nature  writers ;  the  faith  is  real  in  most  of  our 
nature  teachers  ;  and  the  love,  —  who  can  doubt  the 
love  of  the  tens  of  thousands  of  those  whose  feet  feel 
the  earth  nowadays,  whose  lives  share  in  the  exist- 
ence of  some  pond  or  wood  or  field  ?  And  who  can 
doubt  the  rest,  the  health,  the  sanity,  and  the  satisfac- 
tion that  these  get  from  the  companionship  of  their 
field  or  wood  or  pond  ? 

There  is  no  way  of  accounting  for  the  movement 
118 


(Movement 

that  reflects  in  the  least  upon  its  reality  and  genuine- 
ness. It  may  be  only  the  appropriation  by  the  com- 
mon people  of  the  world  that  the  scientists  have  dis- 
covered to  us ;  it  may  be  a  popular  reaction  against 
the  conventionality  of  the  eighteenth  century  ;  or 
the  result  of  our  growing  wealth  and  leisure ;  or  a 
fashion  set  by  Thoreau  and  Burroughs,  — one  or  all 
of  these  may  account  for  its  origin  ;  but  nothing 
can  explain  the  movement  away,  or  hinder  us  from 
being  borne  by  it  out,  at  least  a  little  way,  under 
the  open  of  heaven,  to  the  great  good  of  body  and 
soul. 

Among  the  cultural  influences  of  our  times  that 
have  developed  the  proportions  of  a  movement,  this 
so-called  nature  movement  is  peculiarly  American. 
No  such  general,  widespread  turning  to  the  out-of- 
doors  is  seen  anywhere  else ;  no  other  such  body  of 
nature  literature  as  ours ;  no  other  people  so  close 
to  nature  in  sympathy  and  understanding,  because 
there  is  no  other  people  of  the  same  degree  of  culture 
living  so  close  to  the  real,  wild  out-of-doors. 

The  extraordinary  interest  in  the  out-of-doors  is 
not  altogether  a  recent  acquirement.  We  inherited  it. 
Nature  study  is  an  American  habit.  What  else  had 

119 


of 

the  pioneers  and  colonists  to  study  but  the  out-of- 
doors  ?  and  what  else  was  half  as  wonderful  ?  They 
came  from  an  old  urban  world  into  this  new  country 
world,  where  all  was  strange,  unnamed,  and  unex- 
plored. Their  chief  business  was  observing  nature, 
not  as  dull  savages,  nor  as  children  born  to  a  dead 
familiarity  with  their  surroundings,  but  as  interested 
men  and  women,  with  a  need  and  a  desire  to  know. 
Their  coming  was  the  real  beginning  of  our  nature 
movement ;  their  observing  has  developed  into  our 
nature  study  habit. 

Our  nature  literature  also  began  with  them.  There 
is  scarcely  a  journal,  a  diary,  or  a  set  of  letters  of 
this  early  time  in  which  we  do  not  find  that  careful 
seeing,  and  often  that  imaginative  interpretation,  so 
characteristic  of  the  present  day.  Even  the  modern 
animal  romancer  is  represented  among  these  early 
writers  in  John  Josselyn  and  his  delicious  book, 
"  New  England's  Rarities  Discovered." 

It  was  not  until  the  time  of  Emerson  and  Bryant 
and  Thoreau,  however,  that  our  interest  in  nature 
became  general  and  grew  into  something  deeper 
than  mere  curiosity.  There  had  been  naturalists  such 
as  Audubon  (he  was  a  poet,  also),  but  they  went 

120 


off  into  the  deep  woods  alone.  They  were  after  new 
facts,  new  species.  Emerson  and  Bryant  and  Thoreau 
went  into  the  woods,  too,  but  not  for  facts,  nor  did  they 
go  far,  and  they  invited  us  to  go  along.  We  went, 
because  they  got  no  farther  than  the  back-pasture 
fence.  It  was  not  to  the  woods  they  took  us,  but  to 
nature  ;  not  a-hunting  after  new  species  in  the  name 
of  science,  but  for  new  inspirations,  new  estimates 
of  life,  new  health  for  mind  and  spirit. 

But  we  were  slow  to  get  as  far  even  as  their  back- 
pasture  fence,  slow  to  find  nature  in  the  fields  and 
woods.  It  was  fifty  years  ago  that  Emerson  tried  to 
take  us  to  nature ;  but  fifty  years  ago,  how  few  there 
were  who  could  make  sense  out  of  his  invitation,  to 
say  nothing  of  accepting  it !  And  of  Thoreau's  first 
nature  book,  "A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merri- 
mack  Rivers,"  there  were  sold,  in  four  years  after 
publication,  two  hundred  and  twenty  copies.  But  two 
hundred  and  twenty  of  such  books  at  work  in  the 
mind  of  the  country  could  leaven,  in  time,  a  big  lump 
of  it.  And  they  did.  The  out-of-doors,  our  attitude 
toward  it,  and  our  literature  about  it  have  never 
been  the  same  since. 

Even  yet,  however,  it  is  the  few  only  who  respond 

121 


of  t$ 

to  Thoreau,  Emerson,  and  Burroughs,  who  can  find 
nature,  as  well  as  birds  and  trees,  who  can  think  and 
feel  as  well  as  wonder  and  look.  Before  we  can  think 
apd  feel  we  must  get  over  our  wondering,  and  we 
must  get  entirely  used  to  looking.  This  we  are  slowly 
doing,  —  slowly,  I  say,  for  it  is  the  monstrous,  the 
marvelous,  the  unreal  that  most  of  us  still  go  out 
into  the  wilderness  for  to  see, — bears  and  wolves, 
foxes,  eagles,  orioles,  salmon,  mustangs,  porcupines 
of  extraordinary  parts  and  powers. 

There  came  to  my  desk,  tied  up  with  the  same 
string,  not  long  since,  three  nature  books  of  a  sort 
to  make  Thoreau  turn  over  in  his  grave,  —  accounts 
of  beasts  and  birds  such  as  old  Thetbaldus  gave  us  in 
his  "  Physiologus,"  that  pious  and  marvelous  bestiary 
of  the  dark  ages.  These  three  volumes  that  I  refer 
to  are  modern  and  about  American  animals,  but  they, 
too,  might  have  been  written  during  the  dark  ages. 
All  three  have  the  same  solemn  preface,  declaring 
the  absolute  truth  of  the  observations  that  follow  (as 
if  we  might  doubt  ?),  and  piously  pointing  out  their 
high  moral  purpose ;  all  three  likewise  start  out  with 
the  same  wonderful  story,  —  an  animal  biography  : 
one,  of  a  slum  cat,  born  in  a  cracker  box.  Among  the 

122 


(Yftowmmf 

kittens  of  the  cracker  box  was  an  extraordinary  kitten 
of  "pronounced  color,"  who  survives  and  comes  to 
glory.  The  next  book  tells  the  biography  of  a  fox, 
born  in  a  hole  among  the  Canadian  hills.  Among 
the  pups  born  in  this  hole  was  one  extraordinary  pup 
"more  finely  colored  "  than  the  others,  who  survives 
and  comes  to  glory.  The  third  book  tells  the  bio- 
graphy of  a  wolf,  born  in  a  cave  among  the  rocks, 
still  farther  north.  Among  the  cubs  born  in  this  cave 
was  one  extraordinary  cub,  "  larger  than  the  others," 
who  survives  and,  as  is  to  be  expected  of  a  wolf, 
comes  to  more  glory  than  the  cracker-box  kitten  or 
the, fox  pup  of  the  hills. 

Such  are  the  stories  that  are  made  into  texts  and 
readers  for  our  public  schools  ;  such  are  the  animals 
that  go  roaming  through  the  woods  of  the  American 
child's  imagination.  But  no  such  kittens  or  cubs  or 
pups  lurk  in  my  eight-acre  woodlot.  I  have  seen  sev- 
eral (six,  to  be  exact)  fox  pups,  but  never  did  I  see 
this  overworked,  extraordinary,  cum  laude  pup  of  the 
recent  nature  books. 

So  long  as  we  continue  to  read  and  believe  such 
accounts,  just  so  long  shall  we  find  it  impossible  to 
go  with  Audubon  and  Thoreau  and  Burroughs,  for 

123 


of  tffc 

they  have  no  place  to  take  us,  nothing  to  show  us 
when  we  arrive.  Their  real  world  does  not  exist. 

But  we  know  that  a  real,  ordinary,  yet  a  marvelous 
world  does  exist,  and  right  at  hand.  The  present 
great  nature  movement  is  an  outgoing  to  discover  it, 
—  its  trees,  birds,  flowers,  its  myriad  forms.  This  is 
the  meaning  of  the  countless  manuals,  the  "  how-to- 
know"  books,  and  the  nature  study  of  the  public 
schools.  And  this  desire  to  know  Nature  is  the  rea- 
sonable, natural  preparation  for  the  deeper  insight 
that  leads  to  communion  with  her,  —  a  desire  to  be 
traced  more  directly  to  Agassiz,  and  the  hosts  of 
teachers  he  inspired,  perhaps,  than  to  the  poet-essay- 
ists like  Emerson  and  Thoreau  and  Burroughs. 

Let  us  learn  to  see  and  name  first.  The  inexperi- 
enced, the  unknowing,  the  unthinking,  cannot  love. 
One  must  live  until  tired,  and  think  until  baffled,  be- 
fore he  can  know  his  need  of  Nature ;  and  then  he 
will  not  know  how  to  approach  her  unless  already 
acquainted.  To  expect  anything  more  than  curiosity 
and  animal  delight  in  a  child  is  foolish,  and  the 
attempt  to  teach  him  anything  more  at  first  than  to 
know  the  out-of-doors  is  equally  foolish.  Poets  are 
born,  but  not  until  they  are  old. 

124 


(Ttafute  Qtlowmtnl 

But  if  one  got  no  farther  than  his  how-to-know 
book  would  lead,  him,  he  still  would  get  into  the 
fields,  —  the  best  place  for  him  this  side  of  heaven, 
—  he  would  get  ozone  for  his  lungs,  red  blood,  sound 
sleep,  and  health.  As  a  nation,  we  had  just  begun  to 
get  away  from  the  farm  and  out  of  touch  with  the 
soil.  The  nature  movement  is  sending  us  back  in 
time.  A  new  wave  of  physical  soundness  is  to  roll 
in  upon  us  as  the  result,  accompanied  with  a  newness 
of  mind  and  of  morals. 

For,  next  to  bodily  health,  the  influence  of  the 
fields  makes  for  the  health  of  the  spirit.  It  is  easier 
to  be  good  in  a  good  body  and  an  environment  of 
largeness,  beauty,  and  peace,  —  easier  here  than  any- 
where else  to  be  sane,  sincere,  and  "  in  little  thyng 
have  suffisaunce."  If  it  means  anything  to  think 
upon  whatsoever  things  are  good  and  lovely,  then  it 
means  much  to  own  a  how-to-know  book  and  to 
make  use  of  it. 

This  is  hardly  more  than  a  beginning,  however, 
merely  satisfying  an  instinct  of  the  mind.  It  is  good 
if  done  afield,  even  though  such  classifying  of  the 
out-of-doors  is  only  scraping  an  acquaintance  with 
nature.  The  best  good,  the  deep  healing,  come  when 

125 


of 

one,  no  longer  a  stranger,  breaks  away  from  his  get- 
ting and  spending,  from  his  thinking  with  men,  and 
camps  under  the  open  sky,  where  he  knows  without 
thinking,  and  worships  without  priest  or  chant  or 
prayer. 

The  world's  work  must  be  done,  and  only  a  small 
part  of  it  can  be  done  in  the  woods  and  fields.  The 
merchants  may  not  all  turn  ploughmen  and  wood- 
choppers.  Nor  is  it  necessary.  What  we  need  to  do, 
and  are  learning  to  do,  is  to  go  to  nature  for  our  rest 
and  health  and  recreation. 


IX 


June 

A  REFERENCE  to  one  of  my  notebooks  shows  that 
in  June,  1895,  there  were  thirty-six  species  of  birds 
nesting  within  singing  distance  of  my  study  win- 
dows ;  in  1907  there  were  thirty-two,  the  most  dis- 
tant nest  being  less  than  five  minutes'  walk  from  my 
door. 

This  is  not  a  modern  natural  history  story,  —  an 
extraordinary  discovery  that  only  I  am  capable  of 
making.  Start  your  own  June  list,  and  I  warrant  you 
will  find  as  many.  For  there  is  nothing  peculiarly 
birdy  about  my  small  farm.  Any  place  as  uncon- 
genial to  English  sparrows  and  one  that  offers  a  fair 
chance  to  the  native  birds  will  keep  you  busy  count- 
ing nests  in  June. 

In  the  chimney  built  the  swifts  (three  or  four 
127 


of  t$ 

families  of  them) ;  in  the  barn  loft  a  small  colony  of 
barn  swallows ;  and  under  the  roof  of  the  pig-pen  a 
pair  of  phoebes,  my  earliest  spring  birds  and  often 
the  latest  with  a  brood. 

A  bushy  hillside  drops  from  the  porch  to  the  old 
orchard,  and  along  this  steep  southern  slope  nested 
a  pair  of  indigo  buntings  and  a  pair  of  rose-breasted 
grosbeaks  (my  rarest  neighbors) ;  also,  here  in  the 
thick  underbrush  were  found  chewinks,  thrashers, 
black  and  white  warblers,  song  sparrows,  and  a  pair 
of  partridges. 

In  the  orchard  there  were  half  a  dozen  chippies' 
nests,  even  more  robins',  two  nests  of  bluebirds,  and 
one  each  of  the  tree  swallow,  flicker,  yellow  warbler, 
chebec,  downy  woodpecker,  kingbird,  great  crested 
flycatcher,  redstart,  and  screech  owl. 

Baltimore  orioles  nested  in  the  elms  along  the  road ; 
close  to, the  little  river  were  the  nests  of  catbirds 
and  red-winged  blackbirds ;  a  nest  of  swamp  spar- 
rows and  of  Maryland  yellow-throats  in  the  meadow, 
and  in  the  woodlot  a  pewee's  nest,  a  crow's  nest, 
and  three  nests  of  ovenbirds. 

All  these  I  found  ;  but  besides  these  I  know  that 
a  pair  of  yellow-billed  cuckoos  built  somewhere  near 

128 


the  house,  as  did  a  pair  of  blue  jays,  wood  thrushes, 
and  chestnut-sided  warblers.  These  I  am  still  waiting 
for.  I  need  another  June. 

Not  one  of  all  these  birds  is  rare  or  even  shy, 
unless  it  be  the  swamp  sparrow ;  none  of  them  that 
the  veriest  beginner  should  not  come  to  know  in  the 
course  of  one  June.  For  these  are  almost  domesti- 
cated, our  near  neighbors  and  friends,  who  desire 
and  who  will  return  our  friendly,  neighborly  calls. 

There  are  other  birds,  like  the  hawks,  the  owls, 
the  herons,  the  rarer  thrushes,  sparrows,  warblers, 
and  marsh  birds,  that  require  time  and  tramping  for 
their  discovery.  I  know  the  very  log  in  which  I  could 
find  young  turkey  buzzards  in  June ;  the  clump  of 
dog-roses  where  a  least  bittern  will  build  ;  the  old 
gum  that  for  years  has  harbored  a  pair  of  barred 
owls  ;  the  little  cove  where,  spring  after  spring,  a 
black  duck  nests.  But  I  should  need  a  vacation  to 
visit  these. 

I  watch  the  others  between  times,  —  between  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  breakfast,  between  break- 
fast and  train  time  and  church  time,  and  on  Satur- 
days to  and  from  the  garden.  If  you  are  your  own 
gardener,  you  can  carry  not  only  a  hoe,  but  along 

129 


of 

with  it  a  pair  of  field  glasses.  I  even  combine  the 
care  of  my  pig  and  the  study  of  the  phoebes  that  share 
his  pen.  Occasionally  I  drop  everything  and  hunt  for 
a  nest,  as  if  life  depended  upon  my  finding  it.  But  life 
does  n't,  the  more  's  the  pity,  for  me.  Life  depends 
on  the  finding  of  things  that  are  very  different  from 
birds'  nests,  things  that  require  a  deal  of  hunting 
the  whole  year  around.  Yet  I  take  the  time  to  hunt 
birds'  nests,  too,  for  life  is  more  than  meat  (I  raise 
a  good  many  vegetables),  and,  after  all,  my  life  does 
depend,  in  no  small  measure,  upon  my  finding  a  few 
birds'  nests  in  June. 

I  remember  a  June  when  I  tried  to  get  life  out  of 
a  grocery  store,  and  the  sickness  of  it  comes  over 
me  even  yet  at  times.  I  sold  kerosene  oil,  brown 
sugar,  coffee,  salt  mackerel,  and  plug  tobacco.  I 
breathed  the  mingled  breath  of  kerosene  oil,  brown 
sugar,  coffee,  salt  mackerel,  and  plug  tobacco,  —  the 
odor  of  mere  money,  — when  I  knew  the  fox  grapes 
were  in  blossom,  the  magnolias  and  the  azaleas ; 
when  I  knew  the  fields  were  green  and  the  birds 
were  in  song  !  I  have  longed  for  many  things,  but 
never  as  I  longed  that  June  for  the  farm,  for  the  long, 
long  day,  yes,  and  for  the  long,  long  row.  It  was 

130 


June 

that  kerosened,  salt-mackereled,  plug-tobaccoed  — 
moneyed  —  June  that  took  me  back  to  sweet  poverty 
and  the  farm. 

I  do  not  wish  to  think  of  living  where  the  birds 
and  wild  flowers  do  not  live  with  me.  A  city  flat  is 
convenient,  and  city  life  is  exciting ;  but  convenience 
and  excitement  plus  meat  and  raiment  are  not  the 
sum  of  life ;  neither,  on  the  other  hand,  are  pure  air, 
sunshine,  birds,  flowers,  a  garden,  quiet,  and  time  to 
think,  the  whole  of  life.  No;  but  when  you  consider 
the  matter,  there  appears  very  little  still  needing  to 
make  life  whole  that  you  cannot  have  along  with 
your  birds,  thoughts,  and  garden. 

Whether  you  love  the  country  or  not,  whether  you 
know  the  difference  between  a  kingbird  and  a  king- 
crab  or  not,  you  owe  it  to  your  body  and  your  soul 
to  get  out  into  the  open  fields  in  June, — not  to  col- 
lect bird  skins  or  birds'  eggs  or  to  make  a  herbarium 
or  a  nature  diary,  but  to  live  a  while  where  the  birds 
and  flowers  live.  The  city  may  be  heaven  enough  for 
you  all  the  rest  of  the  year ;  but  God  did  n't  make 
the  city.  There  are  seasons  —  March  and  February, 
usually  —  when  it  seems  as  if  some  one  else  has 
a  hand  in  making  the  country.  In  June,  however, 


of  i 

the  country  is  all  and  more  than  the  poets  say,  —  if 
it  is  poetry  that  you  come  out  into  the  country  for  to 
feel. 

Take  my  meadow,  for  instance,  all  aglow  in  June 
with  buttercups,  as  if  spread  with  a  sheet  of  beaten 
gold  !  But  now,  if  it  is  only  hay  that  I  am  after  (alas, 
too  often  it  is),  then  my  gold  turns  all  to  brass,  and 
worse  than  brass,  for  buttercups,  as  my  dairyman 
neighbor  tells  me,  make  the  poorest  kind  of  hay.  I 
should  keep  no  cow,  perhaps.  She  gives  nice  milk,  to 
be  sure,  but  she  eats  up  my  beaten  gold,  she  kills  my 
buttercup  poetry.  Maybe  I  am  too  rich,  I  own  too 
much :  one  cow,  one  horse,  two  pigs,  thirty  hens, 
fourteen  acres  of  hills  and  trees.  For  it  is  the  truth 
that  I  do  not  enjoy  the  foxes  now  as  I  did  before  I 
kept  hens,  nor  the  buttercups  as  I  did  before  I  got  the 
cow.  Suppose,  now,  besides  all  of  this,  I  had  money, 
—  a  lot  of  it !  —  several  thousand  dollars  !  You  never 
get  money  along  with  a  farm,  and  that  is  one  reason 
why  a  farm  is  such  a  safe  and  sure  investment  for  the 
soul.  It  is  not  the  cow  nor  the  chores,  but  money  in 
or  out  of  the  bank,  that  robs  life  of  its  June. 

Nor  is  owning  one  cow  like  having  a  dairy  farm. 
The  average  man  had  better  keep  his  money  in  the 

132 


bank  than  invest  in  more  than  one  cow.  A  single 
.cow  cannot  eat  all  the  gold  out  of  one's  meadow. 
I  am  still  glad  for  the  buttercups ;  and  where  the 
meadow  passes  into  the  upland,  where  the  butter- 
cups give  place  to  the  daisies,  my  gold  runs  into  sil- 
ver; which  means  certainly  that  I  am  not  making  the 
farm  pay,  for  on  a  paying  farm  a  daisy  —  weed  that  it 
is,  and  not  a  native  weed  at  that — is  more  like  a  spot 
of  leprosy  than  of  silver.  Our  daisies  are  not  even 
those  sung  by  the  poets,  I  understand.  What  of  it  ? 
A  ten-acre  field  of  them  lies  snow-white  in  my  mem- 
ory, fresh  with  the  freshness  of  early  June  and  the 
sweeter  freshness  of  boyhood.  And  as  for  poetry,  I 
have  my  own  for  them, — the  poetry  of  boyhood,  of 
Commencement  days  at  the  Institute,  and  of  girls  in 
white  frocks. 

There  is  no  particular  flower  that  means  June  to 
me  as  the  hepatica  means  March,  the  arbutus  April, 
the  shad-bush  May,  and  the  red  wood-lily  July.  I  can- 
not think  of  single  blossoms,  or  of  here  and  there 
a  spot  of  rare  flowers,  in  June,  but  only  of  pastures 
drifted  white,  meadows  purple-misted,  and  rolling 
hillsides  billowy  pink,  —  of  laurel,  forget-me-nots,  dai- 
sies, viburnums,  and  buttercups.  This  is  no  time  to 

133 


of 

botanize..  Leave  the  collecting  can  at  home,  for  one 
day  at  least,  and  wander  forth,  not  to  hunt,  but  to 
drift  and  float,  or,  if  you  run  aground,  to  wade  knee- 
deep  in  June.  A  botanist  who  is  never  poet  misses 
as  much  in  the  out-of-doors  as  the  poet  who  is  never 
botanist. 

If  there  were  no  other  flower  in  the  month  but  the 
white  water-lily,  June  would  still  be  June.  "Who  can 
contemplate  it,"  exclaims  Mr.  Burroughs,  "as  it 
opens  in  the  morning  sun,  and  distills  such  perfume, 
such  purity,  such  snow  of  petal,  and  such  gold  of 
anther,  from  the  dark  water  and  still  darker  ooze! 
How  feminine  it  seems  beside  its  coarser  and  more 
robust  congeners,  how  shy,  how  pliant,  how  fine  in 
texture  and  starlike  in  form  !  " 

How  the  water-lily  and  spatter-dock  can  grow  from 
the  same  mud  is  past  understanding.  One  has  every 
grace,  the  other  none.  But  the  dock  can  live  in 
stagnant  water,  which  perhaps  is  a  sort  of  compen- 
sation. 

And  these  two,  for  me,  are  always  associated  with 
magnolias,  — Magnolia  glauca, — and  magnolias  are 
associated  with  "old,  forgotten,  far-off  things."  Their 
absence  from  my  swamps  here  is  part  of  the  price 


June 

I  pay  for  my  transplanting  to  these  New  England 
fields. 

If  that  were  all,  it  were  price  enough.  But  think 
of  June  in  New  Jersey,  with  buzzards  soaring,  car- 
dinals whistling,  and  turtle  doves  cooing ;  with  swamps 
magnolia-scented,  and  woods  astir  with  box-turtles, 
pine  snakes,  pine-tree  lizards,  and  'possums!  Then 
think  of  June  in  Massachusetts  with  none  of  these, — 
at  least  in  my  neighborhood ! 

What  then  ?  I  could  scarcely  strain  the  magnolia's 
breath  from  the  mingling  odors  if  it  were  here,  for 
the  common  air  I  breathe  is  the  breath  of  blossom- 
ing clover,  wild  grape,  elder,  blackberry,  rose,  and 
azalea.  I  must  almost  smell  them  by  families.  For 
here  are  six  wild  roses  perfuming  my  air,  five  vibur- 
nums, six  dogwoods  (these  last  quite  lacking  in  per- 
fume, be  it  said),  and  wild  blackberries  that  I  have 
never  dared  to  number.  Who  wants  to  number  them  ? 
to  spend  his  June  with  a  "plant  analysis,"  dissecting 
and  keeping  tally?  It  is  enough  now  to  be  alive  and 
out  of  doors  among  the  flowers.  Nor  is  it  all  of  June 
to  find  thirty-six  species  of  birds  nesting  within  a 
radius  of  five  hundred  and  fifty-five  and  one  half  feet 
from  your  front  door.  I  do  not  cite  these  figures  in 


order  to  startle,  but  to  suggest,  if  I  might,  the  joyous 
medley  of  life  in  June,  its  variety  and  abundance. 
You  may  not  be  able  to  name  all  the  warblers; 
you  have  never  yet  made  out  which  is  which  among 
the  dogwoods  and  viburnums ;  the  dogwood  flowers 
are  all  four-pointed  stars,  while  the  viburnums  are 
all  five-pointed.  But  what  of  it,  —  four  or  five,  dog- 
wood or  viburnum !  Here  they  are,  banked  in  soft, 
snowy  fragrance  along  the  margin  of  the  pond.  A 
tiny  nest  swings  from  a  fork  among  them,  a  tiny 
bird  with  a  white  ring  around  her  eye  broods  and 
watches  you  drift  past.  You  have  a  fish-pole,  and  all 
about  you  and  within  you  is  the  June. 


X 


ONE  of  the  pair  of  crows  that  nest  in  my  woodlot  has 
been  flying  over  all  winter  long  with  a  gap  in  his  right 
wing.  Three  at  least  of  the  large  wing  feathers  are 
missing,  and  the  result  is  a  perceptible  limp.  The  bird 
moves  through  the  air  with  the  list  of  a  boat  that  has 
shifted  or  lost  its  ballast.  Were  he  set  upon  in  the 
air  by  a  hawk,  as  might  happen  if  he  were  smaller, 
the  race  would  be  short.  He  is  plainly  disabled 
by  the  loss  of  these  three  feathers,  and  has  been 
for  months.  Just  how  and  when  the  loss  occurred 
I  don't  know.  It  is  likely,  however,  that  the  feath- 
ers were  shot  away  in  June,  —  in  corn-stealing 
time.  Now  for  nearly  a  year  he  has  been  hobbling 
about  on  one  whole  and  one  half  wing,  trusting  to 
luck  to  escape  his  enemies,  until  he  can  get  three 


of  tfyt 

new  feathers  to  take  the  places  of  these  that  are 
missing. 

Well,  why,  in  all  this  time,  if  these  three  feathers 
are  so  necessary,  has  he  not  gotten  them  ?  He  might 
reply,  "  Which  of  you  by  taking  thought  can  add  as 
much  as  one  cubit  to  your  stature,  to  say  nothing  of 
three  hairs  to  the  top  of  your  head  ? "  By  taking  time 
(which  is  a  fine  human  phrase  for  giving  Nature  time), 
and  with  the  right  conditions,  you  may  add  the  cubit. 
So  the  crow  may  get  his  feathers.  It  is  not  an  affair 
between  the  crow  and  his  feathers,  nor  between  the 
crow  and  Nature.  It  is  wholly  Nature's  affair  with 
the  crow's  feathers,  and  so  seriously  does  Nature 
take  it,  so  careful  is  she,  so  systematic,  so  almost 
arbitrary  about  it,  that  the  feathers  of  crows,  like 
the  hairs  of  our  heads,  can  truly  be  said  to  be  num- 
bered. 

Nothing  could  look  more  haphazard,  certainly,  than 
the  way  a  hen's  feathers  seem  to  drop  off  at  moulting 
time.  The  most  forlorn,  undone,  abject  creature  about 
the  farm  is  the  half -moulted  hen.  There  is  one  in  the 
chicken  yard  now,  so  nearly  naked  that  she  really  is 
ashamed  of  herself,  and  so  miserably  helpless  that 
she  squats  in  a  corner  all  night,  unable  to  reach  the 

138 


low  poles  of  the  roost.  It  is  a  critical  experience 
with  the  hen,  this  moulting  of  her  feathers,  and  were 
it  not  for  the  protection  of  the  yard  it  might  be  a 
fatal  experience.  Nature  seems  to  have  no  hand  in 
the  business  at  all ;  if  she  has,  then  what  a  mess  she 
is  making  of  it ! 

But  pick  up  the  hen,  study  the  falling  of  the  feath- 
ers carefully,  and  lo  !  here  is  law  and  order,  system 
and  sequence,  as  if  every  feather  were  a  star,  every 
quill  a  planet,  and  the  old  white  hen  the  round  sphere 
of  the  universe.  You  will  put  her  down  reverently, 
awfully,  this  hen  that  you  took  up  with  such  compas- 
sion, and  you  will  say,  "Such  knowledge  is  too  won- 
derful for  me." 

So  it  is,  for  the  moult  means  a  great  deal  more  than 
the  mere  renewal  of  feathers,  just  how  much  more  no 
one  seems  to  know.  This  much  is  plain,  that  once 
a  year,  usually  after  the  nesting  season,  it  seems 
a  physical  necessity  for  most  birds  to  renew  their 
plumage. 

We  get  a  new  suit  (some  of  us)  because  our  old 
one  wears  out.  That  is  the  most  apparent  cause  for 
the  new  annual  suit  of  the  birds.  Yet  with  them,  as 
with  some  of  the  favored  of  us  humans,  the  feathers 


of 

go  out  of  fashion,  and  the  change,  the  moult,  is  a 
mere  matter  of  style. 

But  the  annual  moult,  first  of  all,  is  Nature's  wise 
provision  for  the  safety  and  warmth  of  the  bird. 
Feathers  are  not  only  covering,  as  our  clothes,  but 
also  means  of  locomotion,  and,  hence,  the  bird's  very 
means  of  life.  A  year  of  use  leaves  many  of  the  feath- 
ers worn  and  broken,  some  of  them  through  accident 
entirely  lost  (as  with  my  crow),  and  while  they  might 
last  for  two  years,  or  even  longer,  Nature  has  found 
it  necessary  to  provide  a  new  plumage  as  often  as 
once  a  year,  in  order  to  keep  the  race  of  birds  at 
its  best. 

But  there  are  other  reasons,  at  least  there  are  ad- 
vantages taken  of  the  moult  for  other  ends :  such  as 
the  adaptation  of  the  feathers  to  the  varying  tem- 
peratures of  the  seasons,  —  heavier  in  winter  and 
lighter  in  summer ;  also  the  adaptation  of  the  color 
of  the  plumage  to  the  changing  colors  of  the  en- 
vironment,—  as  the  change  from  the  dark  summer 
color  of  the  ptarmigan  to  its  snow-white  winter 
plumage  to  match  the  snows  of  its  far  northern 
home ;  then,  and  perhaps  most  interesting  of  all,  is 
the  advantage  taken  of  the  moult,  for  the  adorning 

140 


Qj&o&n 

of  the  bird  for  the  mating  season.  Indeed,  Nature 
goes  so  far,  in  some  cases,  as  to  cause  a  special 
moult  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  wedding,  — as  if 
fine  feathers  do  make  a  fine  bird.  All  this  to  meet 
the  fancy  of  the  bride  !  so,  at  least,  the  scientists  tell 
us.  Whether  or  not  her  fancy  is  the  cause,  it  is 
a  fact  that  among  the  birds  it  is  the  bridegroom 
who  is  adorned  for  his  wife,  and  sometimes  the  fine 
feathers  come  by  a  special  moult. 

Not  far  from  my  house  is  a  nest  of  black-crowned 
night  herons,  or  "quawks."  Preparatory  to  the  mating 
of  the  pair  there  started  from  the  crown  of  the  male 
(and  female,  also,  in  this  case,)  two  or  three  white, 
rounded  plumes,  which  now  hang  eight  inches  In 
length,  waving  gracefully  to  his  shoulders.  They  are 
the  special  glory  of  the  wedding  time  ;  but  soon  after 
the  nesting  season  is  over  they  will  drop  out,  not  to 
come  again  until  he  goes  a-wooing  Mrs.  Quawk  once 
more.  In  the  white  American  egret,  and  in  the  snowy 
egret,  the  plumes  number  about  fifty,  and  occur  upon 
the  back  close  to  the  tail.  They  are  straight  in 
the  American,  recurved  in  the  snowy,  and  make  the 
famous  "aigrette  "  plumes  of  the  milliner.  The  birds 
are  shot  in  their  nuptial  dress,  and  so  great  has  been 

141 


of 

the  heartless  demand  that  both  species,  once  very 
abundant,  are  now  almost  extinct. 

Bobolink  is  another  special  case.  He  has  two  com- 
plete moults  a  year.  Now,  as  I  write,  I  hear  him 
singing  over  the  meadow,  —  a  jet  black,  white,  and 
cream-buff  lover,  most  strikingly  adorned.  His*  wife, 
down  in  the  grass,  looks  as  little  like  him  as  a  spar- 
row looks  like  a  blackbird.  After  the  breeding  season 
he  moults,  changing  color  so  completely  that  he  and 
his  wife  and  children  all  look  alike,  all  like  sparrows. 
They  even  lose  their  name  now,  flying  south  under 
the  assumed  name  of  "reedbirds." 

Bobolink  passes  the  winter  in  Brazil,  and  at  the 
coming  of  spring,  just  before  the  long  northward 
journey  begins,  he  moults  again  ;  but  you  would 
hardly  know  it  to  look  at  him,  for,  strangely  enough, 
he  is  not  black  and  white,  but  still  colored  like  a 
sparrow  as  he  was  in  the  fall.  Apparently  he  is. 
Look  at  him  more  closely,  however,  and  you  will  find 
the  brownish  yellow  color  is  all  caused  by  a  veil  of 
fine  fringes  hanging  from  the  edges  of  the  feathers. 
Underneath  are  the  black  and  white  and  cream-buff. 
He  starts  northward,  and  by  the  time  he  reaches 
Massachusetts  the  fringe  veil  is  worn  off  and  the 

142 


(grofcen 

black  and  white  bobolink  appears.  Specimens  taken 
after  their  arrival  here  still  show  traces  of  the  yellow 
veil. 

Many  birds  do  not  have  this  spring  moult  at  all, 
and  with  most  of  those  that  do,  the  great  wing 
feathers  are  not  then  renewed  as  are  bobolink's,  but 
only  at  the  annual  moult  after  the  nesting  is  done. 
In  fact,  the  moulting  of  the  remiges,  or  wing  feathers, 
seems  to  be  a  family  affair,  the  process  differing  with 
different  families ;  for  these  are  the  bird's  most  impor- 
tant feathers,  and  their  loss  is  so  serious  a  matter 
that  Nature  has  come  to  make  the  change  according 
to  the  habits  and  needs  of  the  birds. 

With  all  birds  the  order  is  for  the  body  feathers 
to  begin  to  go  first,  then  the  wings,  and  last  the 
tail.  But  the  shedding  of  the  wing  feathers  is  a  very 
slow  and  carefully  regulated  process.  In  the  wild 
geese  and  other  water  birds  the  wing  feathers  drop 
out  with  the  feathers  of  the  body,  and  all  go  so  simul- 
taneously that  the  birds  cannot  fly.  On  land  you  could 
catch  them  with  your  hands,  but  they  keep  near  or 
on  the  water  and  thus  escape,  though  times  have 
been  when  it  was  necessary  to  protect  them  from 
their  human  enemies  at  this  season  by  special  laws. 


of  t$ 

The  necessity  for  the  moult  entails  many  risks, 
for  it  exposes  the  bird  to  peculiar  dangers ;  yet  no 
single  bird  is  abandoned  during  this  period,  none  left 
without  away  of  escape.  The  geese,  as  we  have  seen, 
moult  most  rapidly  and  hence  are  most  helpless,  but 
there  are  few  of  their  enemies  that  they  cannot 
avoid  by  keeping  to  the  water  and  grassy  marshes; 
the  hawks,  that  hunt  by  wing,  moult  so  slowly  that 
they  do  not  feel  a  loss  of  power ;  while  such  birds  as 
the  quail  and  grouse,  that  always  depend  in  part  for 
protection  upon  the  blending  of  their  colors  with  the 
colors  of  their  environment,  seem  especially  so  pro- 
tected during  the  moulting  season.  A  grouse  blotched 
with  light  patches,  where  the  dark-tipped  feathers 
have  fallen  away,  may  so  melt  into  the  mottled  color 
scheme  of  its  background  as  to  escape  the  sharpest 
eye. 

Such  a  rapid,  wholesale  moult  as  in  the  case  of  the 
geese  would  be  fatal  to  land  birds.  Instead,  their 
primaries,  or  large  wing  feathers,  drop  out  one  or  two 
at  a  time  and  symmetrically  from  the  two  wings. 
Oftentimes  it  is  the  two  inner  primaries  that  go  first, 
then  the  others  following  one  at  a  time,  the  outer- 
most last.  This  order  varies,  as  in  the  kingfisher. 

144 


(gtoftm 

In  the  snow  bunting  all  but  two  of  the  old  primaries 
are  gone  before  any  new  ones  have  grown  as  large  as 
the  secondaries.  In  the  hawks,  again,  birds  that  must 
use  f  heir  wings  and  must  have  them  always  at  their 
best,  the  moulting  of  the  wing  feathers  is  very  slow, 
lasting  nearly  the  whole  year.  The  homing  pigeon, 
another  great  flier,  but  not  of  the  same  kind  as  the 
hawks,  begins  about  May  to  moult  his  wing  feathers, 
losing  the  tenth  primary  first,  a  month  later  the  ninth, 
then  the  others  at  intervals  of  from  eight  to  fifteen 
days. 

It  is  quite  enough  to  make  one  pause,  to  make  one 
even  wonder,  when  he  finds  that  this  seemingly  in- 
significant matter  is  taken  so  seriously  by  nature, 
and  that  even  here  there  is  that  perfect  adaptation 
of  means  to  end.  The  gosling,  to  cite  another  in- 
stance, goes  six  weeks  in  down,  then  gets  its  first 
feathers,  which  it  sheds  in  the  fall.  The  young  quail, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  born  with  quills  so  far  advanced 
that  it  is  able  to  fly  almost  as  soon  as  it  is  hatched. 
These  are  mature  feathers ;  but  the  bird  is  still,  young 
and  growing,  and  soon  outgrows  these  first  flight 
feathers,  so  that  they  are  quickly  lost  and  new  ones 
come.  This  goes  on  till  fall,  several  moults  occurring 

'45 


of 

the  first  summer  to  mq£t  the  increasing  weight  of 
the  growing  body. 

Where  there  are  peculiar  uses  made  of  the  tail,  as 
with  the  chimney  swifts  and  woodpeckers,  there  is  a 
peculiar  order  of  moulting.  In  most  birds  the  tail  is 
a  kind  of  balance  or  steering-gear,  and  not  of  equal 
importance  with  the  wings.  Nature,  consequently, 
seems  to  have  attached  less  importance  to  the  feath- 
ers of  the  tail.  They  are  not  so  firmly  set,  and  they 
are  hardly  of  the  same  quality  or  kind;  for  if  a  wing 
feather  is  once  broken  or  lost,  after  the  moult,  it  must 
go  unmended  until  the  annual  moulting  time  comes 
round  again ;  whereas,  if  a  tail  feather  is  lost  through 
accident,  it  is  made  good,  no  matter  when.  How 
do  you  explain  that?  I  know  that  old  theory  of  the 
birds  roosting  with  their  tails  out,  and  so,  through 
generations  of  lost  tails,  those  feathers  now  grow, 
expecting  to  be  plucked  by  some  enemy,  and  so  have 
only  a  temporary  hold.  Perhaps. 

The  normal,  natural  way,  of  course,  is  to  replace  a 
lost  feather  with  a  new  one  as  soon  as  possible ;  but 
in  order  to  give  .extra  strength  to  the  wing  feathers 
nature  has  found  it  necessary  to  check  their  frequent 
change,  and  so  complete  is  the  check  that  the  annual 

146 


moult  is  required  to  replace  one  of  them.  The  Jap- 
anese have  discovered  the  secret  of  this  check,  and 
are  able  by  it  to  keep  certain  feathers  in  the  tails 
of  their  cocks  growing  until  they  reach  the  enormous 
length  of  ten  to  twelve  feet. 

My  crow,  it  seems,  lost  his  three  feathers  just  after 
his  annual  moult;  the  three  broken  shafts  he  carries 
still  in  his  wing,  and  must  continue  to  carry,  as 
the  stars  must  continue  their  courses.  These  three 
feathers  must  round  out  their  cycle  to  the  annual 
moult.  The  universe  of  worlds  and  feathers  is  a  uni- 
verse of  law,  of  order,  and  of  reason. 


XI 


(Tloon 


LAZILY  sailing  clouds,  and  between 
them,  far  away,  the  illimitable  blue! 
And  how  blue !  how  cool !  how  far 
away!  Never  does  the  sky  seem  of  so 
real  azure,  so  fresh  and  new,  but  so 
mysteriously  distant,  as  upon  such  a 
July  day  as  this;  and  never  does  the 
earth  seem  so  warm  and  near.  I  lie 
outstretched  upon  it  as  close  as  I  ever 
lay  upon  my  mother's  breast.  I  feel  the 
crisp  moss  beneath  me,  the  creeping  of  the  bee- 
tle under  my  shoulder,  the  heat  of  the  gray  stone 
against  my  side.  I  throw  out  my  hands,  push  my 
fingers  into  the  hot  soil  and  feel  them  take  root. 
Mother  earth  !  The  clouds  sail  on ;  the  bending  blue 
recedes  ;  and  —  heaven  ?  It  matters  not.  Here  are 

148 


(Ttoon 


my  brothers,  —  the  beetle,  the  moss,  the  gray  stone  ; 
and  here  I  lie  in  the  arms  of  the  mother  who  bore 
me. 

I  have  questions  to  ask  —  to-morrow ;  dreams  to 
dream  —  to-morrow ;  things  to  do  —  to-morrow.  To- 
day I  am  free  in  the  fields ;  to-day  I  am  brother  to 
the  beetle  and  the  stone ;  I  am  neighbor  to  this 
ancient  white  oak  in  whose  shade  I  lie ;  I  am  child 
to  the  earth.  It  is  enough  to  be  to-day. 

How  warm  is  this  mother  breast,  even  here,  under 
the  tree!  The  sun  is  overhead.  The  summer  is  at 
its  height.  The  flood-tide  of  life  has  come.  It  is  high 
noon  of  the  year. 

The  drowsy  silence  of  the  full,  hot  noon  lies  deep 
across  the  field.  Stream  and  cattle  and  pasture-slope 
are  quiet  in  repose.  The  eyes  of  the  earth  are  heavy. 
The  air  is  asleep.  Yet  the  round  shadow  of  my  oak 
begins  to  shift.  The  cattle  do  not  move ;  the  pasture 
still  sleeps  under  the  wide,  white  glare.  But  already 
the  noon  is  passing. 

Of  the  four  seasons  summer  is  the  shortest,  and 
the  one  we  are  least  acquainted  with.  Summer  is 
only  a  pause  between  spring  and  autumn,  only 
the  hour  of  the  year's  noon.  But  the  hour  is  long 

149 


of 

enough  were  we  able  to  stop,  to  lie  down  under 
a  tree  for  the  hour,  unwearied,  wide-awake,  and 
still. 

We  can  be  glad  with  the  spring,  sad  with  the 
autumn,  eager  with  the  winter ;  but  it  is  hard  for  us 
to  go  softly,  to  pause,  to  be  still,  complete,  sufficient, 
full  with  the  full,  sufficient  summer ;  to  hang  poised 
and  expanded  like  the  broad-winged  hawk  yonder  far 
up  in  the  wide  sky. 

But  the  hawk  is  not  still.  The  shadow  of  my  oak 
begins  to  lengthen.  The  hour  is  gone  even  while  it 
comes,  for  wavering  softly  down  the  languid  air  falls 
a  yellow  leaf  from  a  slender  gray  birch  near  by.  I 
remember,  too,  that  on  my  way  through  the  woodlot 
I  frightened  a  small  flock  of  robins  from  a  pine ;  and 
more  than  a  week  ago  the  swallows  were  gathering 
upon  the  telegraph  wires.  It  was  springtime  even 
yesterday ;  to-day  there  are  signs  of  autumn  every- 
where. Perhaps,  after  all,  there  is  no  such  time  as 
summer,  —  no  pause,  no  rest,  no  quiet  in  the  fields, 
no  hour  of  noon. 

Yet  I  get  something  out  of  the  fields,  these  slum- 
berous July  days,  that  is  neither  of  springtime  nor  of 
autumn,  a  ripening,  mellowing,  quieting  something, 

150 


(Tloon 

that  falls  only  when  the  leaves  hang  limp,  when  the 
earth  warms  in  the  shadows,  when  the  wood-lily 
opens  in  the  sun,  and  the  whir  of  the  cicada  times 
the  throbbing  of  the  heat.  And  when  that  some- 
thing falls,  then  I  know  it  is  summer. 

This  is  a  late  July  day,  but  its  dawn  was  still  of 
the  springtime.  At  daybreak  the  birds  were  singing, 
fresh  and  full-throated  as  in  May;  then  the  sun 
burned  through  the  mist  and  the  chorus  ceased. 
Now  I  do  not  hear  even  the  chewink  and  the  talka- 
tive vireo.  Only  the  fiery  notes  of  the  scarlet  tana- 
ger  come  to  me  through  the  dry  white  heat  of  the 
noon,  and  the  resonant,  reverberated  song  of  the 
indigo  bunting,  a  hot,  metallic,  quivering  song,  as 
out  of  a  hot  and  copper  sky. 

There  are  nestlings  still  in  the  woods.  This  indigo 
bunting  has  eggs  or  young  in  the  bushes  up  the  hill- 
side; the  scarlet  tanager  but  lately  finished  his  nest 
in  the  tall  oaks ;  I  looked  in  upon  some  half-fledged 
cuckoos  along  the  fence.  But  all  of  these  are  late. 
The  year's  young  are  upon  the  wing.  A  few  of  the 
spring's  flowers  are  still  opening.  I  noticed  the  bees 
upon  some  tardy  raspberry  blossoms;  and  yonder, 
amid  the  fixed  shining  colors  of  the  wooded  ridge,  I 


of 

see  the  top  of  a  chestnut  tree,  misty  and  tender,  with 
foamy  white  bloom.  These  are  the  last  of  the  season. 
The  July  flowering  of  the  chestnut  always  seems  de- 
layed and  accidental.  The  season's  fruit  has  set,  is 
already  ripening.  Spring  is  gone ;  the  sun  is  over- 
head ;  the  red  wood-lily  is  open.  To-day  is  summer, 
—  noon  of  the  year. 

High  noon !  and  the  hour  strikes  in  the  red  wood- 
lily  aflame  in  the  old  fields  and  in  the  low  thick 
tangles  of  sweet-fern  and  blackberry  that  border  the 
upland  woods. 

This  is  a  flower  of  fire,  the  worshiper  of  the  sun, 
the  very  heart  of  the  summer.  How  impossible  it 
would  be  to  kindle  a  wood-lily  on  the  cold,  damp  soil 
of  April !  It  can  be  lighted  only  on  this  kiln-dried 
soil  of  July.  This  old  hilly  pasture  is  baking  in  the 
sun ;  the  mouldy  moss  that  creeps  over  its  thin 
breast  crackles  and  crumbles  under  my  feet;  the 
patches  of  sweet-fern  that  blotch  it  here  and  there 
crisp  in  the  heat  and  fill  the  smothered  air  with  a 
spicy  breath  ;  but  the  wood-lily  opens  wide  and  full, 
lifting  its  spotted  lips  to  the  Sun,  for  it  loves  his 
scorching  kiss.  See  it  glow !  Should  the  withered 
thicket  burst  suddenly  into  a  blaze  it  would  be  no 

152 


Qtoon 

wonder,  so  little  would  it  take  to  fan  these  glowing 
petals  into  flame. 

The  marsh  marigolds  of  May  spread  the  meadows 
with  a  glow  of  warmth,  yet  that  was  but  a  gilded  fire 
beside  the  wilting,  withering  heat  of  this  midsummer 
lily.  That  early  flush  has  gone.  There  is  hardly  a 
fleck  of  spring's  freshness  and  delicacy  on  the  fields, 
none  of  the  tenderness  of  the  bluets  that  touched 
everything  in  May,  none  even  of  the  softness  of  the 
hardwood  greens  that  lasted  far  into  June.  The  colors 
are  set  now,  dry  and  glistening,  as  if  varnished  over. 
The  odors,  too,  have  changed.  They  were  moist  and 
faint  then, — the  fragrance  of  the  breath  of  things. 
Now  they  are  strong,  pungent,  heavy,  —  the  tried-out 
smells  of  the  sweat  of  things. 

Life  has  grown  lusty  and  lazy  and  rank.  It  stood 
no  higher  than  the  heads  of  the  violets  along  my 
little  river  at  the  coming  of  June  ;  to-day  I  cannot 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  water  without  breaking 
through  a  hedge  of  swamp  milkweed,  boneset,  and 
peppermint.  Here  are  turtle-head,  joe-pye-weed,  jew- 
el-weed, the  budding  goldenrods,  and  the  spreading, 
choking,  rasping  smartweed.  The  year  is  full  grown. 
It  is  strong,  rich,  luxuriant. 


of 

And  how  erect  and  unblushing !  The  pointed 
spireas,  the  sumacs,  the  thistles,  this  crowd  along 
the  river,  this  red  wood-lily,  even  the  tall  swaying 
spray  of  meadow-rue !  Slender,  dainty,  airy,  the 
meadow-rue  falls  just  short  of  grace  and  delicacy. 
It  feels  the  season's  pride  of  life.  It  is  angled,  rigid, 
rank.  Were  there  the  slightest  bend  to  its  branches, 
the  merest  suggestion  of  soul  to  the  plant,  then, 
from  root  to  spreading  panicles,  there  had  been  more 
grace,  more  misty,  penciled  delicacy  wrought  into 
the  tall  meadow-rue  than  into  any  flower-form  of 
my  summer. 

But  the  suggestion  of  soul  in  the  meadow-rue,  as 
in  the  whole  face  of  nature,  is  lost  in  flesh.  It  is  the 
body,  not  the  spirit,  that  is  now  present.  She  is  well 
fed,  well  clothed,  opulent,  mature.  She  is  conven- 
tional, —  as  conventional  as  a  single,  stiff  spire  of  the 
steeple-bush,  —  turned  to  such  a  pointed  nicety  as  to 
seem  done  by  machine. 

And  yet  the  steeple-bush  rarely  grows  as  single 
spires,  but  by  the  mdadow-full.  We  rarely  see  a  single 
spire.  We  never  gather  summer  flowers  one  by  one, 
as  we  gather  the  arbutus  and  hepatica  of  spring. 
Life  has  lost  its  individuality.  It  is  all  massed, 

154 


(Vloon 

crowded,  communal.  The  odors  mingle  now  and  drift 
wide  on  the  winds,  and  as  wide  on  the  hillsides  spread 
the  colors,  gold  and  green  and  white,  and,  where  the 
rocky  pasture  runs  down  to  the  woods,  the  pink  of 
the  steeple-bush,  like  a  flush  of  dawn. 

Across  my  neighbor's  pasture  lies  this  soft  glory 
of  the  spireas  all  through  July.  It  runs  in  irregular 
streams  down  to  the  brook,  rising  there  into  a  low- 
hanging  bank  of  mist  where  the  clustering  spires  of 
pink  are  interspersed  with  the  taller,  whiter  meadow- 
sweet, —  the  "  willow-leaved  spirea." 

There  are  shadowy  rooms  in  the  deep  woods  where 
the  spring  lingers  until  the  leaves  of  autumn  begin 
to  fall.  Here,  in  July,  I  can  find  the  little  twin  flow- 
ers Linnea  and  Mitchella,  blossoms  that  should  have 
opened  with  the  bloodroot  and  anemone.  But  Life 
has  largely  fled  the  woods  and  left  them  empty  and 
still.  She  is  out  in  the  open,  along  the  roadsides, 
rioting  in  the  sun.  The  time  of  her  maidenhood 
is  gone.  She  is  entirely  maternal  now,  bent  on  re- 
plenishing the  earth,  on  reseeding  it  against  all  pos- 
sibility of  death.  She  covers  the  ground  with  seed, 
and  fills  the  very  air  with  seed  that  the  winds  may 
sow.  She  has  grown  lusty,  bold,  almost  defiant,  no 


of 

longer  asking  leave,  but  claiming  for  her  own  the 
pastures,  gardens,  waysides,  even  the  dumps  and 
waste  places. 

Yonder  where  the  cattle  feed  stands  the  barbed 
purple  thistle,  arrogant,  royal,  unapproachable  by 
man  or  beast.  "  Stand  back,"  it  says,  by  every  one 
of  its  thousand  nettles  ;  "  this  field  is  mine."  How 
savage  and  how  splendid  it  is !  After  the  royal  pur- 
ple fades,  the  goldfinches  will  dare  to  come  and  eat 
the  plumed  seeds  and  scatter  them  by  the  million, 
but  even  the  goldfinch  has  been  known  to  perish 
upon  the  poisoned  spikes  with  which  the  plant  is 
armed. 

As  persistent  and  successful  as  the  thistle,  though 
not  as  arrogant  and  savage,  grows  the  wild  white 
carrot  in  the  mowing  fields.  The  courts  have  called 
it  names  and  set  a  price  upon  its  life.  It  has  been 
pulled  out,  cut  off  and  burned,  —  exterminated  again 
and  again  by  statute. 

Life  snaps  her  fingers  at  us  in  July ;  lays  hold  of 
us,  even,  as  we  pass,  and  makes  us  carry  her  burs 
and  beggar' s-ticks  for  a  wider  planting.  I  am  as 
useful  as  the  tail  of  my  cow.  Neither  the  cow  nor 
I  ever  come  home  from  the  July  fields  without  an 

156 


abundant  sowing  of  stick  -  tights,  tick -seeds,  and 
burdock  burs. 

There  is  little  beauty,  fragrance,  or  even  economic 
value  in  this  wild,  overrunning  host  of  thistles,  docks, 
daisies,  plantains,  yarrows,  carrots,  that  now  possess 
the  earth ;  but  when  they  crowd  out  along  the  dusty 
roadsides  and  cover  the  sterile,  neglected,  and  un- 
sightly places,  we  can  sing,  like  the  good  gray  poet, 
"the  leaves  and  flowers  of  the  commonest  weeds"  in 
our  "  Song  of  Joys." 

There  is  certainly  some  praise  due  the  chicory, 
or  blue  corn-flower,  for  it  is  a  waste  transformer,  a 
"slummer"  among  flowers,  if  ever  there  was  one. 
Like  the  daisy,  it  is  a  foreigner;  but  unlike  the 
daisy,  its  coming  is  wholly  benevolent.  It  asks  only 
the  roadsides,  and  for  these  along  only  the  choked, 
deserted  stretches;  and  where  the  summer  dust  lies 
deepest.  Coarse,  common,  weedy,  it  doubtless  is  ; 
but  it  never  droops  in  the  heat,  and  its  blue  shines 
through  the  smother  like  azure  through  the  mists  of 
the  sky. 

The  winds  and  the  birds  are  the  sowers  of  the 
wayside,  and  to  them  I  am  indebted  for  this  touch  of 
midsummer  color.  But  they  miss  certain  spots  along 


the  roads,  or  else  these  are  the  patches  that  have  no 
deepness  of  earth,  where  the  seed  of  the  winds'  sow- 
ing can  get  no  hold,  for  I  have  had  to  sow  these  my- 
self. As  I  go  up  and  down  I  carry  a  pocketful  of 
sweet  clover  seed, — melilotus, — and  over  every  waste 
and  sandy  place  I  scatter  a  few  of  the  tiny  seeds, 
when,  lo  !  not  two  blades  of  grass  where  one  grew  be- 
fore, but  a  patch  of  tall  white  flowers,  breathing  the 
sweetness  of  heaven  into  all  the  air,  and  humming  in 
the  July  sun  with  the  joyous  sound  of  my  honey  bees. 
All  this,  and  for  season  after  season,  where  nothing 
grew  before ! 

Along  with  melilotus  in  the  gravelly  cuts  and  burnt 
woodlands  grows  the  fireweed,  a  tall  showy  annual 
that  waves  its  pink,  plumed  head  throughout  July. 
Farther  north  and  west,  this  striking  flower,  like  the 
melilotus,  yields  a  heavy  flow  of  delicious  honey,  but 
it  does  not  attract  the  bees  in  this  locality.  Neither 
do  my  bees  get  any  nectar  from  the  fat  little  indigo- 
bush  that  takes  possession  of  the  unfarmed,  sandy 
fields  in  July,  though  the  wild  bumblebees  are  busy 
upon  it  as  long  as  it  remains  in  bloom. 

But  this  is  not  the  native  land  of  the  honey  bee,  and 
it  is  sheer  luck  that  the  white  clover,  the  basswood, 

158 


(Tloon 


the  goldenrod,  and  here  in  July,  the  sumac,  give  down 
to  these  immigrant  bees  their  honey-sweets. 

High  noon  of  the  year !  The  laggard  breeze  comes 
to  me  now  from  the  maple  swamp,  slow  and  sleepy 
with  the  odor  of  the  white  azaleas ;  a  flock  of  chick- 
adees stop  and  quiz  me ;  the  quivering  click-clack  of 
a  distant  mowing-machine  fills  the  air  with  a  drowsy 
hum. 

Up  to  this  time  I  have  not  seen  a  black  snake,  but 
now  one  is  watching  me  with  raised  head  from  the 
edge  of  ferns  among  the  rocks.  One  step  toward  him 
and  the  lifted,  rigid  neck,  a  flashing  streak  of  j  et,  glides 
swiftly,  evenly,  mysteriously  away,  leaving  me  with  an 
uncanny  feeling  of  chill. 

It,  too,  is  a  creature  of  the  sun,  as  is  everything  that 
seems  to  belong  especially  to  July.  Smells,  colors, 
sounds,  shapes,  are  all  sun-born.  The  hum  of  the  in- 
sects, the  music  of  the  mower,  the  clear,  strong  hues 
of  the  flowers,  the  sweet  breath  of  curing  hay,  the 
heavy  balsamic  odors  of  the  woods, — everything  seems 
either  a  distillation,  a  vibration,  an  essence,  or  some 
direct,  immediate  work  of  the  sun. 

Has  your  blood  been  work  and  winter  faded  until 
it  runs  thin  ?  Would  you  feel  the  pulse  of  a  new 

159 


of 

life  ?  Come,  we  will  take  a  day  out  of  July  and  bask 
like  the  wood-lily  and  the  snake ;  we  will  sleep  for 
this  one  day  in  the  blazing,  sleeping,  living,  mid- 
summer sun. 


XII 
in 

IT  is  certainly  a  humble  environment.  The  delicious 
spring  of  water,  the  plenty  of  wild,  cool  air,  and  the 
clean  pavement  of  loose  stones  do  not  surround  this 
home  as  they  did  the  home  of  Mr.  Burroughs's 
phoebes,  nor  does  this  look  "out  upon  some  wild 
scene  and  overhung  by  beetling  crags."  Instead,  this 
phcebe's  nest  is  stuck  close  up  to  the  low  board  roof 
in  my  pig-pen. 

"You  have  taken  a  handful  of  my  wooded  acres," 
says  Nature,  "and  if  you  have  not  improved  them, 
you  at  least  have  changed  them  greatly.  But  they 
are  mine  still.  Be  friendly  now,  go  softly,  and  you 
shall  have  them  all,  —  and  I  shall  have  them  all,  too. 
We  will  share  them  together." 

And  we  do.  Every  part  of  the  fourteen  acres  is 
161 


mine,  yielding  some  kind  of  food  or  fuel  or  shelter. 
And  every  foot,  yes,  every  foot,  is  Nature's ;  as  en- 
tirely hers  as  when  the  thick  primeval  forest  stood 
here.  The  apple  trees  are  hers  as  much  as  mine,  and 
she  has  an  average  of  ten  different  bird  families,  liv- 
ing in  them  every  spring.  A  pair  of  crows  and  a  pair 
of  red-tailed  hawks  are  nesting  in  the  woodlot ;  there 
are  at  least  three  families  of  chipmunks  in  as  many 
of  my  stone  piles ;  a  fine  old  tree  toad  (his  fourth 
season  now)  sleeps  on  the  porch  under  the  climbing 
rose  ;  a  hornet's  nest  hangs  in  a  corner  of  the  eaves ; 
a  small  colony  of  swifts  thunder  in  the  chimney ; 
swallows  twitter  in  the  hayloft ;  a  chipmunk  and  a 
half-tame  gray  squirrel  feed  in  the  barn ;  and  —  to 
bring  an  end  to  this  bare  beginning  —  under  the  roof 
of  the  pig-pen  dwell  this  pair  of  phcebes. 

To  make  a  bird  house  of  a  pig-pen,  to  divide  it  be- 
tween the  pig  and  the  bird  —  this  is  as  far  as  Nature 
can  go,  and  this  is  certainly  enough  to  redeem  the 
whole  farm.  For  she  has  not  sent  an  outcast  or  a 
scavenger  to  dwell  in  the  pen,  but  a  bird  of  character, 
however  much  he  may  lack  in  song  or  color.  Phoebe 
does  not  make  up  well  in  a  picture ;  neither  does  he 
perform  well  as  a  singer ;  there  is  little  to  him,  in 

162 


in  tfy 

fact,  but  personality, — personality  of  a  kind  and  quan- 
tity, sufficient  to  make  the  pig-pen  a  decent  and  re- 
spectable neighborhood. 

Phoebe  is  altogether  more  than  his  surroundings. 
Every  time  I  go  to  feed  the  pig,  he  lights  upon  a  post 
near  by  and  says  to  me :  "  It 's  wnat  you  are  !  Not 
what  you  do,  but  how  you  do  it !  "  —  with  a  launch 
into  the  air,  a  whirl,  an  unerring  snap  at  a  cabbage 
butterfly,  and  an  easy  drop  to  the  post  again,  by  way 
of  illustration.  "  Not  where  you  live,  but  how  you 
live  there ;  not  the  feathers  you  wear,  but  how  you 
wear  them,  —  it  is  what  you  are  that  counts  !  " 

There  is  a  difference  between  being  a  "character  " 
and  having  one.  "Jim  "  Crow  is  a  character,  largely 
because  he  has  so  little.  That  is  why  he  is  "Jim." 
My  phoebe  lives  over  the  pig,  but  he  has  no  nick- 
name like  the  crow.  I  cannot  feel  familiar  with  a 
bird  of  his  air  and  carriage,  who  faces  the  world  so 
squarely,  who  settles  upon  a  stake  as  if  he  owned  it, 
who  lives  a  prince  in  my  pig-pen. 

Look  at  him  !  How  alert,  able,  free !  Notice  the 
limber  drop  of  his  tail,  the  ready  energy  it  suggests. 
By  that  one  sign  you  would  know  the  bird  had  force. 
He  is  afraid  of  nothing,  not  even  the  cold,  and  he 

163 


migrates  only  because  he  is  a  flycatcher,  and  is  thus 
compelled  to.  The  earliest  spring  day,  however,  that 
you  find  the  flies  buzzing  in  the  sun,  look  for  phoebe. 
He  is  back.  The  first  of  my  birds  to  return  in  the 
spring  is  he,  often  beating  the  bluebird  and  robin  by 
almost  a  week.  It  was  a  fearful  spring,  the  spring  of 
1904.  How  phoebe  managed  to  exist  those  miserable 
March  days  is  a  mystery.  He  came  directly  to  the 
pen,  as  he  had  come  the  year  before,  and  his  pres- 
ence in  that,  bleakest  of  Marches  made  it  almost 
spring. 

The  same  force  and  promptness  are  manifest  in 
the  domestic  affairs  of  the  bird.  The  first  to  arrive 
that  spring,  he  was  also  the  first  to  build  and  bring 
off  a  brood,  —  or,  perhaps,  She  was.  And  the  size  of 
the  brood  —  of  the  broods,  for  the  second  one  is  now 
a-wing,  and  there  may  yet  be  a  third  ! 

Phoebe  appeared  without  his  mate,  and  for  nearly 
three  weeks  he  hunted  in  the  vicinity  of  the  pen, 
calling  the  day  long,  and,  toward  the  end  of  the  sec- 
ond week,  occasionally  soaring  into  the  air,  flapping 
and  pouring  forth  a  small,  ecstatic  song  that  seemed 
fairly  forced  from  him. 

These  aerial  bursts  meant  just  one  thing :  she  was 
164 


n 

coming,  was  coming  soon  !  Was  she  coming,  or  was 
he  getting  ready  to  go  for  her  ?  Here  he  had  been 
for  nearly  three  weeks,  his  house-lot  chosen,  his 
mind  at  rest,  his  heart  beating  faster  with  every  sun- 
rise. It  was  as  plain  as  day  that  he  knew  —  was  cer- 
tain— just  how  and  just  when  something  lovely  was 
going  to  happen.  I  wished  I  knew.  I  was  half  in 
love  with  her  myself,  half  jealous  of  him,  and  I,  too, 
watched  for  her. 

But  she  was  not  for  me.  On  the  evening  of  April 
14,  he  was  alone  as  usual.  The  next  morning  a  pair 
of  phcebes  flitted  in  and  out  of  the  windows  of  the  pen. 
Here  she  was.  Will  some  one  tell  me  all  about  it  ? 
Had  she  just  come  along  and  fallen  instantly  in  love 
with  him  and  his  fine  pig-pen  ?  There  are  foolish 
female  birds ;  and  there  are  records  of  just  such 
love  affairs;  but  this  was  too  early  in  the  season. 
It  is  pretty  evident  that  he  nested  here  last  year. 
Was  she  his  old  mate,  as  Wilson  believes  ?  Did  they 
keep  together  all  through  the  autumn  and  winter,  all 
the  way  from  Massachusetts  to  Florida  and  back  ?  Or 
was  she  a  new  bride,  who  had  promised  him  before 
he  left  Florida  ?  If  so,  then  how  did  she  know  where 
to  find  him  ? 

165 


of 

Here  is  a  pretty  story.   But  who  will  tell  it  to  me? 

What  followed  is  a  pretty  story,  too,  had  I  a 
lover's  pen  with  which  to  write  it,  —  the  story  of  his 
love,  of  their  love,  and  of  her  love  especially,  which 
was  last  and  best. 

For  several  days  after  she  came  the  weather  con- 
tinued raw  and  wet,  so  that  nest-building  was  greatly 
delayed.  The  scar  of  an  old,  last  year's  nest  still 
showed  on  a  stringer,  and  I  wondered  if  they  had 
decided  on  this  or  some  other  site  for  the  new  nest. 
They  had  not  made  up  their  minds,  for  when  they 
did  start  it  was  to  make  three  beginnings. 

Then  I  offered  a  suggestion.  Out  of  a  bit  of  stick, 
branching  at  right  angles,  I  made  a  little  bracket 
and  tacked  it  up  on  one  of  the  stringers,  down  near 
the  lower  end  of  the  roof.  It  appealed  to  the  birds 
at  once,  and  from  that  moment  the  building  went 
steadily  on. 

Saddled  upon  this  bracket,  as  well  as  mortared  to 
the  stringer,  the  nest,  when  finished,  was  as  safe 
as  a  castle.  And  how  perfect  a  thing !  Few  nests, 
indeed,  combine  the  solidity,  the  softness,  and  the 
exquisite  curve  of  phcebe's. 

In  placing  the  bracket,  I  had  carelessly  nailed  it 
166 


n 

under  one  of  the  cracks  in  the  loose  board  roof.  The 
nest  was  receiving  its  first  linings  when  there  came 
a  long,  hard  rain  that  beat  through  the  crack  and 
soaked  the  little  cradle.  This  was  serious,  for  a  great 
deal  of  mud  had  been  worked  into  the  thick  founda- 
tion, and  here,  in  the  constant  shade,  the  dampness 
would  be  long  in  drying  out. 

The  builders  saw  the  mistake,  too,  and  with  their 
great  good  sense  immediately  began  to  remedy  it. 
They  built  the  bottom  up  thicker,  carried  the  wall 
over  on  a  slant  that  brought  the  outermost  point 
within  the  crack,  then  raised  the  whole  nest  until 
the  cup  was  as  round-rimmed  and  hollow  as  the 
mould  of  the  bird's  breast  could  make  it. 

The  outside  of  the  nest,  its  base,  is  broad  and 
rough  and  shapeless  enough  ;  but  nothing  could  be 
softer  and  lovelier  than  the  inside,  the  cradle,  and 
nothing  drier,  for  the  slanting  walls  shed  every  drop 
from  the  leaky  crack. 

Wet  weather  followed  the  heavy  rain  until  long 
after  the  nest  was  finished.  The  whole  structure  was 
as  damp  and  cold  as  a  newly  plastered  house.  It  felt 
wet  to  my  touch.  Yet  I  noticed  the  birds  were  already 
brooding.  Every  night,  and  often  during  the  day,  I 

167 


of 

would  see  one  of  them  in  the  nest,  so  deep  in  that 
only  a  head  or  a  tail  showed  over  the  round  rim. 
After  several  days  I  looked  to  see  the  eggs,  but 
to  my  surprise  found  the  nest  empty.  It  had  been 
robbed,  I  thought,  yet  by  what  creature  I  could  not 
imagine.  Then  down  cuddled  one  of  the  birds  again, 
—  and  I  understood.  Instead  of  wet  and  cold,  the 
nest  to-day  felt  warm  to  my  hand ;  it  was  dry  almost 
to  the  bottom.  It  had  changed  color,  too,  all  the 
upper  part  having  turned  a  soft  silver-gray.  She 
(I  am  sure  it  was  she)  had  not  been  brooding  her 
eggs  at  all ;  she  had  been  brooding  her  mother's 
thought  of  them  ;  and  for  them  had  been  nestling 
here  these  days  and  nights,  drying  and  warming  their 
damp  cradle  with  the  fire  of  her  life  and  love. 

In  due  time  the  eggs  came,  —  five  of  them,  white, 
spotless,  and  shapely.  While  the  little  hen  was  hatch- 
ing them  I  gave  my  attention  further  to  the  cock. 

I  am  writing  this  with  a  black  suspicion  over- 
hanging him.  But  of  that  later.  I  hope  it  is  un- 
founded, and  I  shall  give  him  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt.  A  man  is  innocent  until  proved  guilty.  I 
have  no  positive  evidence  of  Mr.  Phoebe's  wrong. 

Our  intimate  friendship  has  revealed  a  most  pleas- 
168 


in  tty 

ing  nature  in  phoebe.  Perhaps  such  close  and  con- 
tinued association  would  show  like  qualities  in  every 
bird,  even  in  the  kingbird.  But  I  fear  only  a  woman, 
like  Mrs.  Olive  Thorne  Miller,  could  find  them  in  him. 
Not  much  can  be  said  of  this  flycatcher  family,  ex- 
cept that  it  is  useful,  —  a  kind  of  virtue  that  gets  its 
chief  reward  in  heaven.  I  am  acquainted  with  only 
four  of  the  other  nine  members,  —  great-crest,  king- 
bird, pewee,  and  chebec,  —  and  each  of  these  has 
some  redeeming  attributes  besides  the  habit  of  catch- 
ing flies. 

They  are  all  good  nest-builders,  good  parents,  and 
brave,  independent  birds  ;  but  aside  from  phcebe  and 
pewee  —  the  latter  in  his  small  way  the  sweetest 
voice  of  the  oak  woods  —  the  whole  family  is  an  odd 
lot,  cross-grained,  cross-looking,  and  about  as  musical 
as  a  family  of  ducks.  A  duck  seems  to  know  that 
he  cannot  sing.  A  flycatcher  knows  nothing  of  any 
shortcoming.  He  knows  he  can  sing,  and  in  time 
he  will  prove  it.  If  desire  and  effort  count  for  any- 
thing, he  certainly  must  prove  it  in  time.  How  long 
the  family  has  already  been  training,  no  one  knows. 
Everybody  knows,  however,  the  success  each  fly- 
catcher of  them  has  thus  far  attained.  According  to 

169 


of 

Mr.  Chapman's  authority,  the  five  rarer  members 
perform  as  follows :  the  olive-sided  swoops  from  the 
tops  of  the  tallest  trees  uttering  "pu-pu"  or  "pu- 
pip  "  ;  the  yellow-bellied  sits  upon  the  low  twigs  and 
sneezes  a  song,  an  abrupt  "pse-ek,"  explosive  and 
harsh,  produced  with  a  painful,  convulsive  jerk;  the 
Acadian  by  the  help  of  his  tail  says  "  spec "  or 
"peet,"  now  and  then  a  loud  "  pee-e-yuk,"  meanwhile 
trembling  violently;  Trail's  flycatcher  jerks  out  his 
notes  rapidly,  doubling  himself  up  and  fairly  vibrat- 
ing with  the  explosive  effort  to  sing  "  ee-zee-e-up  "  ; 
the  gray  kingbird  says  a  strong,  simple  "pitirri." 

It  would  make  a  good  minstrel  show,  doubtless,  if 
the  family  would  appear  together.  In  chorus,  surely, 
they  would  be  far  from  a  tuneful  choir. 

I  should  hate  to  hear  the  flycatchers  all  together. 
Yet  individually,  in  the  wide  universal  chorus  of  the 
out-of-doors,  how  much  we  should  miss  the  king- 
bird's metallic  twitter  and  the  chebec's  insistent  call ! 

There  was  little  excitement  for  phcebe  during  this 
period  of  incubation.  He  hunted  in  the  neighborhood 
and  occasionally  called  to  his  mate,  contented  enough 
perhaps,  but  certainly  sometimes  appearing  tired. 
One  rainy  day  he  sat  in  the  pig-pen  window  looking 

170 


in  t§t 

out  at  the  gray  wet  world.  He  was  humped  and  si- 
lent and  meditative,  his  whole  attitude  speaking  the 
extreme  length  of  his  day,  the  monotony  of  the  drip, 
drip,  drip  from  the  eaves,  and  the  sitting,  the  cease- 
less sitting,  of  his  brooding  wife. 

He  might  have  hastened  the  time  by  catching  a 
few  flies  for  her  or  by  taking  her  place  on  the  nest, 
but  I  never  saw  him  do  it. 

Things  were  livelier  when  the  eggs  hatched,  for  it 
required  a  good  many  flies  a  day  to  keep  the  five 
young  ones  growing.  And  how  they  grew !  Like 
bread  sponge  in  a  pan,  they  began  to  rise,  pushing 
the  mother  up  so  that  she  was  forced  to  stand  over 
them  ;  then  pushing  her  out  until  she  could  cling 
only  to  the  side  of  the  nest  at  night ;  then  pushing 
her  off  altogether.  By  this  time  they  were  hanging 
to  the  outside  themselves,  covering  the  nest  from 
sight,  almost,  until  finally  they  spilled  off  upon  their 
wings. 

Out  of  the  nest  upon  the  air !  Out  of  the  pen  and 
into  a  sweet,  wide  world  of  green  and  blue  and  golden 
light !  I  saw  the  second  brood  take  their  first  flight, 
and  it  was  thrilling. 

The  nest  was  placed  back  from  and  below  the 
171 


of  t 

window,  so  that  in  leaving  it  the  young  would  have 
to  drop,  then  turn  and  fly  up  to  get  out.  Below  was 
the  pig. 

As  they  grew  I  began  to  fear  that  they  might  try 
their  wings  before  this  feat  could  be  accomplished, 
and  so  fall  to  the  pig  below.  But  Nature,  in  this  case, 
was  careful  of  her  pearls.  Day  after  day  they  clung 
to  the  nest,  even  after  they  might  have  flown ;  and 
when  they  did  go,  it  was  with  a  sure  and  a  long  flight 
that  carried  them  out  and  away  to  the  tops  of  the 
neighboring  trees. 

They  left  the  nest  one  at  a  time,  and  were  met  in 
the  air  by  their  mother,  who  darting  to  them,  calling 
loudly,  and,  whirling  about  them,  helped  them  as 
high  and  as  far  away  as  they  could  go. 

I  wish  the  simple  record  of  these  family  affairs 
could  be  closed  without  one  tragic  entry.  But  that 
can  rarely  be  of  any  family.  Seven  days  after  the 
first  brood  were  a-wing,  I  found  the  new  eggs  in  the 
nest.  Soon  after  that  the  male  bird  disappeared. 
The  second  brood  has  now  been  out  a  week,  and  in 
all  this  time  no  sight  or  sound  has  been  had  of  the 
father. 

What  happened  ?  Was  he  killed  ?  Caught  by  a  cat 
172 


n 

or  a  hawk  ?  It  is  possible ;  and  this  is  an  easy  and 
kindly  way  to  think  of  him.  Nor  is  it  impossible  that 
he  may  have  remained  as  leader  and  protector  to  the 
first  brood,  or  (perish  the  thought !)  might  he  per- 
haps have  grown  weary  at  sight  of  the  second  lot 
of  five  eggs,  of  the  long  days  and  the  neglect  that 
they  meant  for  him,  and  out  of  jealousy  and  fickle- 
ness wickedly  deserted  ? 

I  hope  it  was  death,  a  stainless,  even  ignominious 
death  by  one  of  my  neighbor's  dozen  cats. 

Death  or  desertion,  it  involved  a  second  tragedy. 
Five  such  young  ones  at  this  time  were  too  many 
for  the  mother.  She  fought  nobly ;  no  mother  could 
have  done  more.  All  five  were  brought  within  a  few 
days  of  flight ;  then,  one  day,  I  saw  a  little  wing 
hanging  listlessly  over  the  side  of  the  nest.  I  went 
closer.  One  had  died.  It  had  starved  to  death. 
There  were  none  of  the  parasites  in  the  nest  that 
often  kill  these  birds.  It  was  a  plain  case  of  sacri- 
fice, —  by  the  mother,  perhaps  ;  by  the  other  young, 
maybe,  —  one  for  the  other  four. 

But  she  did  well.  Nine  such  young  birds  to  her 
credit  since  April.  Who  shall  measure  her  actual  use 
to  the  world  ?  How  does  she  compare  in  value  with 


the  pig  ?  Yesterday  I  saw  several  of  her  brood  along 
the  meadow  fence  hawking  for  flies.  They  were  not 
far  from  my  cabbage  patch. 

I  hope  that  a  pair  of  them  returns  to  me  another 
spring,  and  that  they  come  early.  Any  bird  that 
deigns  to  dwell  under  roof  of  mine  commands  my 
friendship  ;  but  no  other  bird  takes  phcebe's  place  in 
my  affections,  there  is  so  much  in  him  to  like  and 
he  speaks  for  so  much  of  the  friendship  of  nature. 

"  Humble  and  inoffensive  bird  "  he  has  been  called 
by  one  of  our  leading  ornithologies  —  because  he 
comes  to  my  pig-pen !  "  Inoffensive  "  ?  this  bird  with 
the  cabbage  butterfly  in  his  beak  ?  The  faint  and 
damning  praise !  And  "  humble  "  ?  There  is  not  a 
humble  feather  on  his  body.  Humble  to  those  who 
see  the  pen  and  not  the  bird.  But  to  me  —  why,  the 
bird  has  made  a  palace  of  my  pig-pen. 

The  very  pig  seems  less  a  pig  because  of  this  ex- 
quisite association ;  and  the  lowly  work  of  feeding 
the  creature  has  been  turned  by  phcebe  into  an  aes- 
thetic course  in  bird  study. 


XIII 

n  (Account  fcnf§ 

THERE  were  chipmunks  everywhere.  The  stone 
walls  squeaked  with  them.  At  every  turn,  from  early 
spring  to  early  autumn,  a  chipmunk  was  scurrying 
away  from  you.  Chipmunks  were  common.  They 
did  no  particular  harm,  no  particular  good  ;  they  did 
nothing  in  particular,  being  only  chipmunks  and 
common,  until  one  morning  (it  was  June-bug  time)  I 
stopped  and  watched  a  chipmunk  that  sat  atop  the 
stone  wall  down  in  the  orchard.  He  was  eating,  and 
the  shells  of  his  meal  lay  in  a  little  pile  upon  the  big 
flat  stone  which  served  as  his  table. 

They   were    acorn    shells,    I   thought,    yet   June 
seemed  rather  early  in  the  season  for  acorns,  and 


of  t$ 

looking  closer  I  discovered  that  the  pile  was  entirely 
composed  of  June-bug  shells,  —  wings  and  hollow 
bodies  of  the  pestiferous  beetles ! 

Well,  well !  I  had  never  seen  this  before,  never  even 
heard  of  it.  Chipmunk,  a  useful  member  of  society  ! 
actually  eating  bugs  in  this  bug-ridden  world  of 
mine  !  This  was  interesting  and  important.  Why,  I 
had  really  never  known  chipmunk,  after  all ! 

So  I  had  n't.  He  had  always  been  too  common. 
Flying  squirrels  were  more  worth  while,  because 
there  were  none  on  the  farm.  Now,  however,  I  deter- 
mined to  cultivate  the  acquaintance  of  chipmunk,  for 
there  might  be  other  discoveries  awaiting  me. 

And  there  were.  A  narrow  strip  of  grass  separated 
the  orchard  and  my  garden  patch.  It  was  on  my  way 
to  the  garden  that  I  most  often  stopped  to  watch  this 
chipmunk,  or  rather  the  pair  of  them,  in  the  orchard 
wall.  June  advanced,  the  beetles  disappeared,  and 
my  garden  grew  apace.  For  the  first  time  in  four 
years  there  were  prospects  of  good  strawberries. 
Most  of  my  small  patch  was  given  over  to  a  new 
berry,  one  that  I  had  originated,  and  I  was  waiting 
with  an  eagerness  which  was  almost  anxiety  for  the 
earliest  berries. 

176 


(ftn  (Account  uri^  (Ttatute 

The  two  chipmunks  in  the  wall  were  now  seven, 
the  young  ones  quite  as  large  as  their  parents,  and 
both  young  and  old  on  the  best  of  terms  with  me. 

I  had  put  a  little  stick  beside  each  of  the  three 
big  berries  that  were  reddening  first  (though  I  could 
have  walked  from  the  house  blindfolded  and  picked 
them).  I  might  have  had  the  biggest  of  the  three  on 
June  7th,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  flavor  I  thought  it 
best  to  wait  another  day.  On  the  8th  I  went  down 
with  a  box  to  get  it.  The  big  berry  was  gone,  and  so 
was  one  of  the  others,  while  only  half  of  the  third 
was  left  on  the  vine  ! 

Gardening  has  its  disappointments,  its  seasons  of 
despair,  —  and  wrath,  too.  Had  a  toad  showed  him- 
self at  that  moment  he  would  have  fared  badly.  I 
snatched  a  stone  and  let  it  go  at  a  robin  flying  over, 
for  more  than  likely  it  was  he  who  had  stolen  my 
berries.  On  the  garden  wall  sat  a  friendly  chipmunk 
eyeing  me  sympathetically. 

Three  day  slater  several  fine  berries  were  ripe.  On 
my  way  to  the  garden  I  passed  the  chipmunks  in  the 
orchard.  A  shining  red  spot  among  the  vine-covered 
stones  of  their  wall  brought  me  to  a  stop,  for  I 
thought,  on  the  instant,  that  it  was  my  rose-breasted 

177 


of  t 

grosbeak,  and  that  I  was  about  to  get  a  clue  to  its 
nest.  Then  up  to  the  slab  where  he  ate  the  June- 
bugs  scrambled  the  chipmunk,  and  the  rose-red  spot 
on  the  breast  of  the  grosbeak  dissolved  into  a  big 
scarlet-red  strawberry.  And  by  its  long  wedge  shape 
I  knew  it  was  one  of  my  new  variety. 

I  hurried  across  to  the  patch  and  found  every 
berry  gone,  while  a  line  of  bloody  fragments  led  me 
back  to  the  orchard  wall,  where  a  half  dozen  fresh 
calyx  crowns  completed  my  second  discovery. 

No,  it  did  not  complete  it.  It  took  a  little  watching 
to  find  out  that  the  whole  family  —  all  seven !  — were 
after  berries.  They  were  picking  them  half  ripe,  even, 
and  actually  storing  them  away,  canning  them  down 
in  the  cavernous  depths  of  the  stone  pile ! 

Alarmed  ?  Yes,  and  I  was  wrathful,  too.  The  taste 
for  strawberries  is  innate,  original;  you  can't  be 
human  without  it.  But  joy  in  chipmunks  is  a  culti- 
vated liking,  aesthetic  in  its  nature.  What  chance  in 
such  a  circumstance  has  the  nature-lover  with  the 
human  man  ?  What  shadow  of  doubt  as  to  his  choice 
between  the  chipmunks  and  the  strawberries  ? 

I  had  no  gun  then  and  no  time  to  go  over  to  my 
neighbor's  to  borrow  his.  So  I  stationed  myself  near 

178 


tt  (Account  Unf§  (tlatute 

by  with  a  fistful  of  stones,  and  waited  for  the  thieves 
to  show  themselves.  I  came  so  near  to  hitting  one  of 
them  once  that  the  sweat  started  all  over  me.  After 
that  there  was  no  danger.  I  lost  my  nerve.  The  little 
scamps  knew  that  war  was  declared,  and  they  hid  and 
dodged  and  sighted  me  so  far  off  that  even  with  a  gun 
I  should  have  been  all  summer  killing  the  seven  of 
them. 

Meantime,  a  big  rain  and  the  warm  June  days 
were  turning  the  berries  red  by  the  quart.  They  had 
more  than  caught  up  to  the  squirrels.  I  dropped  my 
stones  and  picked.  The  squirrels  picked,  too,  so  did 
the  toads  and  robins.  Everybody  picked.  It  was  free 
for  all.  We  picked  them  and  ate  them,  jammed  them 
and  canned  them.  I  almost  carried  some  over  to  my 
neighbor,  but  took  peas  instead.  You  simply  can't 
give  your  strawberries  in  New  England  to  ordinary 
neighbors,  who  are  not  of  your  choosing.  You  have 
no  fears  at  all  as  to  what  they  will  say  to  your 
peas. 

The  season  closed  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  and  our 
taste  was  not  dim  nor  this  natural  love  for  straw- 
berries abated ;  but  all  four  of  the  small  boys  had 
the  hives  from  over-indulgence,  so  bountifully  did 

179 


of  t$ 

nature  provide,  so  many  did  the  seven  chipmunks 
leave  us ! 

Peace  between  me  and  the  chipmunks  had  been 
signed  before  the  strawberry  season  closed,  and  the 
pact  still  holds.  Other  things  have  occurred  since  to 
threaten  it,  however.  Among  them,  an  article  in  a 
recent  number  of  a  carefully  edited  out-of-door  mag- 
azine, of  wide  circulation.  Herein  the  chipmunk 
family  was  most  roundly  rated,  in  fact  condemned  to 
annihilation  because  of  its  wicked  taste  for  birds' 
eggs  and  for  young  birds.  Numerous  photographs 
accompanied  the  article,  showing  the  red  squirrel 
with  eggs  in  his  mouth,  but  no  such  proof  (even  the 
red  squirrel  photographs  I  strongly  believe  were  done 
from  a  stuffed  squirrel)  of  chipmunk's  guilt,  though 
he  was  counted  equally  bad  and,  doubtless,  will  suffer 
with  chickaree  at  the  hands  of  those  who  took  the 
article  seriously. 

I  believe  that  is  a  great  mistake.  Indeed,  I  be- 
lieve the  whole  article  a  deliberate  falsehood,  con- 
cocted in  order  to  sell  the  fake  photographs.  Chip- 
munk is  not  an  egg-sucker,  else  I  should  have  found 
it  out.  But  because  I  never  caught  him  at  it  does  not 
mean  that  no  one  else  has.  It  does  mean,  however, 

180 


n  (Account  toritfj 

that  if  chipmunk  robs  at  all  he  does  it  so  seldom  as 
to  call  for  no  alarm  nor  for  any  retribution. 

There  is  scarcely  a  day  in  the  nesting  season  when 
I  fail  to  see  half  a  dozen  chipmunks  about  the  walls, 
yet  I  never  noticed  one  even  suspiciously  near  a 
bird's  nest.  In  an  apple  tree,  barely  six  jumps  from 
the  home  of  the  family  in  the  orchard  wall,  a  brood 
of  white-bellied  swallows  came  to  wing  one  spring  ; 
while  robins,  chippies,  and  red-eyed  vireos  —  not  to 
mention  a  cowbird,  which  I  wish  they  had  devoured 
—  have  also  hatched  and  flown  away  from  nests  that 
these  squirrels  might  easily  have  rifled. 

It  is  not  often  that  one  comes  upon  even  the  red 
squirrel  in  the  very  act  of  robbing  a  nest.  But  the 
black  snake,  the  glittering  fiend !  and  the  dear  house 
cats!  If  I  run  across  a  dozen  black  snakes  in  the 
early  summer,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  six  of  them  will 
be  discovered  by  the  cries  of  the  birds  they  are 
robbing.  Likewise  the  cats.  No  creature,  however, 
larger  than  a  June-bug  was  ever  distressed  by  a  chip- 
munk. 

In  a  recent  letter  to  me  Mr.  Burroughs  says :  "  No, 
I  never  knew  the  chipmunk  to  suck  or  destroy  eggs 
of  any  kind,  and  I  have  never  heard  of  any  well- 

181 


of  t$t 

authenticated  instance  of  his  doing  so.  The  red 
squirrel  is  the  sinner  in  this  respect,  and  probably 
the  gray  squirrel  also." 

It  will  be  difficult  to  find  a  true  bill  against  him. 
Were  the  evidence  all  in,  I  believe  that  instead  of  a 
culprit  we  should  find  chipmunk  a  useful  citizen.  I 
reckon  that  the  pile  of  June-bug  bodies  on  the  flat 
stone  leaves  me  still  in  debt  to  him  even  after  the 
strawberries  have  been  credited.  He  may  err  occa- 
sionally, and  may,  on  occasion,  make  a  nuisance  of 
himself,  —  but  so  do  my  four  small  boys,  bless  them  ! 
And,  well  —  who  doesn't?  When  a  family  of  chip- 
munks, which  you  have  fed  all  summer  on  the  ve- 
randa, take  up  their  winter  quarters  inside  the  closed 
cabin,  and  chew  up  your  quilts,  hammocks,  table- 
cloths, and  whatever  else  there  is  of  chewable  prop- 
erties, then  they  are  anathema. 

The  litter  and  havoc  that  those  squirrels  made  were 
dreadful.  But  instead  of  exterminating  them  root 
and  branch,  a  big  box  was  prepared  the  next  summer 
and  lined  with  tin,  in  which  the  linen  was  success- 
fully wintered. 

But  how  real  was  the  loss,  after  all?  Here  is  a 
rough  log  cabin  on  the  side  of  Thorn  Mountain. 

182 


(ftn  (Account  Uri 

What  sort  of  a  tablecloth  ought  to  be  found  in  such 
a  cabin,  if  not  one  that  has  been  artistically  chewed 
by  chipmunks  ?  Is  it  for  fine  linen  that  we  take 
to  the  woods  in  summer  ?  The  chipmunks  are  well 
worth  a  tablecloth  now  and  then,  —  well  worth,  be- 
sides these,  all  the  strawberries  and  all  the  oats  they 
can  steal  from  my  small  patch. 

Only  it  is  n't  stealing.  Since  I  ceased  throwing 
stones  and  began  to  watch  the  chipmunks  carefully, 
I  do  not  find  their  manner  that  of  thieves  in  the 
least.  They  do  not  act  as  if  they  were  taking  what 
they  have  no  right  to.  For  who  has  told  chipmunk 
to  earn  his  oats  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow  ?  No  one. 
Instead  he  seems  to  understand  that  he  is  one  of  the 
innumerable  factors  ordained  to  make  me  sweat,  — 
a  good  and  wholesome  experience  for  me  so  long  as 
I  get  the  necessary  oats. 

And  I  get  them,  in  spite  of  the  chipmunks,  though 
I  don't  like  to  guess  at  how  much  they  carried  off,  — 
anywhere,  I  should  say,  from  a  peck  to  a  bushel, 
which  they  stored,  as  they  tried  to  store  the  berries, 
somewhere  in  the  big  recesses  of  the  stone  wall. 

All  this,  however,  is  beside  the  point.  It  is  n't 
a  case  of  oats  and  berries  against  June-bugs.  You 

183 


don't  haggle  with  Nature  after  that  fashion.  The 
farm  is  not  a  marketplace  where  you  get  exactly 
what  you  pay  for.  You  must  spend  on  the  farm  all 
you  have  of  time  and  strength  and  brains  ;  but  you 
must  not  expect  merely  your  money's  worth.  Infi- 
nitely more  than  that,  and  oftentimes  less.  Farm- 
ing is  like  virtue,  —  its  own  reward.  It  pays  the  man 
who  loves  it,  no  matter  how  short  the  oats  and  corn. 

So  it  is  with  chipmunk.  Perhaps  his  books  don't 
balance,  —  a  few  June-bugs  short  on  the  credit  side. 
What  then  ?  It  is  n't  mere  bugs  and  berries,  as  I  have 
just  suggested,  but  stone  piles.  What  is  the  differ- 
ence in  value  to  me  between  a  stone  pile  with  and 
without  a  chipmunk  in  it.  Just  the  difference,  rela- 
tively speaking,  between  the  house  with  or  without 
my  four  boys  in  it. 

Chipmunk,  with  his  .sleek,  round  form,  his  rich 
color  and  his  stripes,  is  the  daintiest,  most  beautiful 
of  all  our  squirrels.  He  is  one  of  the  friendliest  of  my 
tenants,  too,  friendlier  even  than  chickadee.  The  two 
are  very  much  alike  in  spirit,  but  however  tame  and 
confiding  chickadee  may  become,  he  is  still  a  bird, 
and,  despite  his  wings,  belongs  to  a  different  and  a 
lower  order  of  beings.  Chickadee  is  often  curious 

184 


(ftn  (Account 

about  me ;  he  can  be  coaxed  to  eat  from  my  hand. 
Chipmunk  is  more  than  curious ;  he  is  interested ; 
and  it  is  not  crumbs  that  he  wants,  but  friendship. 
He  can  be  coaxed  to  eat  from  my  lips,  sleep  in  my 
pocket,  and  even  come  to  be  stroked. 

I  have  sometimes  seen  chickadee  in  winter  when 
he  seemed  to  come  to  me  out  of  very  need  for  living 
companionship.  But  in  the  flood-tide  of  summer  life 
chipmunk  will  watch  me  from  his  stone  pile  and  tag 
me  along  with  every  show  of  friendship. 

The  family  in  the  orchard  wall  have  grown  very 
familiar.  They  flatter  me.  I  really  believe,  to  be 
Emersonian,  that  I  am  the  great  circumstance  in  this 
household.  One  of  the  number  is  sure  to  be  sitting 
upon  the  high  flat  slab  to  await  my  coming.  He  sits 
on  the  very  edge  of  the  crack,  to  be  truthful,  and  if 
I  take  a  single  step  aside  toward  him  he  flips,  and 
all  there  is  left  of  him  is  a  little  angry  squeak  from 
the  depths  of  the  stones.  If,  however,  I  pass  properly 
along,  do  not  stop  or  make  any  sudden  motions,  he 
sees  me  past,  then  usually  follows  me,  especially  if  I 
get  well  off  and  pause. 

During  a  shower  one  day  I  halted  under  a  large 
hickory  just  beyond  his  den.  He  came  running  after 

185 


me,  so  interested  that  he  forgot  to  look  to  his  foot- 
ing, and  just  opposite  me  slipped  and  bumped  his 
nose  hard  against  a  stone,  —  so  hard  that  he  sat  up 
immediately  and  vigorously  rubbed  it.  Another  time 
he  followed  me  across  to  the  garden  and  on  to 
the  barbed-wire  fence  along  the  meadow.  Here  he 
climbed  a  post  and  continued  after  me  by  way  of  the 
middle  strand  of  the  wire,  wriggling,  twisting,  even 
grabbing  the  barbs,  in  his  efforts  to  maintain  his 
balance.  He  got  midway  between  the  posts,  when 
the  sagging  strand  tripped  him  and  he  fell  with  a 
splash  into  a  shallow  pool  below. 

Did  the  family  in  the  orchard  wall  stay  together 
as  a  family  for  the  first  summer,  I  should  like  to 
know.  As  late  as  August  they  all  seemed  to  be  in 
the  wall,  for  in  August  I  cut  my  oats,  and  during  this 
harvest  they  all  worked  together. 

I  mowed  the  oats  as  soon  as  they  began  to  yellow, 
cocking  them  to  cure  for  hay.  It  was  necessary  to  let 
them  "  make  "  for  six  or  seven  days,  and  all  this  time 
the  squirrels  raced  back  and  forth  between  the  cocks 
and  the  stone  wall.  They  might  have  hidden  their 
gleanings  in  a  dozen  crannies  nearer  at  hand ;  but 
evidently  they  had  a  particular  storehouse,  near  the 

1 86 


n  (ftccounf 

home  nest,  where  the  family  could  get  at  their  pro- 
visions in  bad  weather  without  coming  forth. 

Had  I  removed  the  stones  and  dug  out  the  nest, 
I  should  have  found  a  tunnel  leading  into  the  ground 
for  a  few  feet  and  opening  into  a  chamber  filled  with 
a  bulky  grass  nest,  —  a  bed  capable  of  holding  half  a 
dozen  chipmunks,  and  adjoining  this,  by  a  short  pas- 
sageway, the  storehouse  of  the  oats. 

How  many  trips  they  made  between  this  crib  and 
the  oat  patch,  how  many  kernels  they  carried  in  their 
pouches  at  a  trip,  and  how  big  a  pile  they  had  when 
all  the  grains  were  in,  —  these  are  more  of  the  ques- 
tions I  should  like  to  know. 

I  might  have  killed  one  of  the  squirrels  and  num- 
bered the  contents  of  his  pouches,  but  my  scientific 
zeal  does  not  quite  reach  that  pitch  any  more.  The 
knowledge  of  just  how  many  oat  kernels  a  chipmunk 
can  stuff  into  his  left  cheek  (into  both  cheeks  he  can  put 
twenty-nine  kernels  of  corn)  is  really  not  worth  the 
cost  of  his  life.  Of  course  some  one  has  counted 
them,  —  just  as  some  one  has  counted  the  hairs  on 
the  tail  of  the  dog  of  the  child  of  the  wife  of  the  Wild 
Man  of  Borneo,  or  at  least  seriously  guessed  at  the 
number. 

187 


of 

But  this  is  thesis  work  for  the  doctors  of  philo- 
sophy, not  a  task  for  farmers  and  mere  watchers  in 
the  woods.  The  chipmunks  are  in  no  danger  be- 
cause of  my  zeal  for  science;  not  that  I  am  uninter- 
ested in  the  capacity  of  their  cheeks  in  terms  of 
oats,  but  that  I  am  more  interested  in  the  whole 
squirrel,  the  whole  family  of  squirrels. 

When  the  first  frosts  come,  the  family  —  if  they 
are  still  a  family  —  seek  the  nest  in  the  ground 
beneath  the  stone  wall.  But  they  do  not  go  to  sleep 
immediately.  Their  outer  entrances  have  not  yet 
been  closed.  There  is  still  plenty  of  fresh  air,  and, 
of  course,  plenty  of  food,  —  acorns,  chestnuts,  hickory 
nuts,  and  oats.  They  doze  quietly  for  a  time  and  eat, 
pushing  the  empty  shells  and  hulls  into  some  side 
passage  prepared  beforehand  to  receive  the  debris. 

But  soon  the  frost  is  creeping  down  through  the 
stones  and  earth  overhead,  the  rains  are  filling  the 
outer  doorways  and  shutting  off  the  supply  of  fresh 
air,  and  one  day,  though  not  sound  sleepers,  the 
family  cuddles  down  and  forgets  to  wake,  —  until 
the  frost  has  begun  to  creep  back  toward  the  sur- 
face, and  down  through  the  softened  soil  is  felt  the 
thrill  of  the  waking  spring. 


XIV 


To  most  eyes,  no  doubt,  the  prospect  would  have 
seemed  desolate,  even  forbidding.  A  single  track  of 
railroad  lay  under  my  feet,  while  down  and  away  in 
front  of  me  stretched  the  Bear  Swamp,  the  largest, 
least-trod  area  of  primeval  swamp  in  southern  New 
Jersey. 

To  me  it  was  neither  desolate  nor  forbidding,  be- 
cause I  knew  it  well,  —  its  gloomy  depths,  its  silent 
streams,  its  hollow  stumps,  its  trails,  and  its  haunting 
mysteries.  Yet  I  had  never  crossed  its  borders.  I  was 
born  within  its  shadows,  close  enough  to  smell  the 
magnolias  of  the  margin,  and  had  lived  my  first  ten 
years  only  a  little  farther  off  ;  but  not  till  now,  after 
twice  ten  years  of  absence,  had  I  stood  here  ready 

189 


of 

to  enter  and  tread  the  paths  where  so  long  I  had 
slipped  to  and  fro  as  a  shadow. 

But  what  a  pity  ever  to  cross  such  a  country !  ever 
to  map  these  unexplored  child-lands  to  a  scale  of 
after  years !  I  tramped  the  Bear  Swamp  over  from 
edge  to  edge,  letting  the  light  of  day  into  the  deep- 
est of  its  recesses,  and  found  —  a  turkey  buzzard's 
nest. 

The  silent  streams,  the  stumps,  the  trails,  I  found, 
too,  and  there,  it  seems,  they  must  be  found  a  cen- 
tury hence  ;  but  the  haunting  mysteries  of  the  great 
swamp  fled  away  before  me,  and  are  gone  forever. 
So  much  did  I  pay  for  my  buzzard's  nest. 

The  cost  in  time  and  trouble  was  what  came  near 
undoing  my  good  uncle,  with  whom  I  was  staying 
near  the  swamp.  "  What  in  thunderation ! "  he  ex- 
claimed, when  I  made  known  my  desires.  "From 
Boston  to  Haleyville  to  see  a  buzzard's  nest ! "  As 
there  are  some  things  that  even  one's  wife  cannot 
quite  understand,  I  did  n't  try  to  reason  the  matter 
of  buzzards'  nests  with  an  uncle.  If  it  had  been  a 
hawk's  nest  or  a  cardinal's,  he  would  have  thought 
nothing  strange.  But  a  buzzard's  ! 

Perhaps  my  years  of  absence  from  the  skies  of  the 
190 


of 

buzzard  account  for  it.  Yet  it  was  never  mere  bird, 
mere  buzzard,  to  me;  so  much  more  than  buzzard, 
indeed,  that  I  often  wish  it  would  sail  into  these 
empty  New  England  skies.  How  eagerly  I  watch 
for  it  when  homeward  bound  toward  Jersey !  The 
moment  I  cross  the  Delaware  I  begin  to  search  the 
skies,  and  I  know,  for  sure,  when  it  swims  into 
view,  that  I  am  near  the  blessed  fields  once  more. 
No  matter  how  wide  and  free,  how  full  of  clouds 
and  color,  my  sky  to  the  end  will  always  need  a 
soaring  buzzard. 

This  is  a  burst  of  sentiment,  truly,  and  does  n't 
explain  at  all  why  I  should  want  to  see  the  creature 
of  these  divine  wings  in  the  gruesome  light  of^an 
earth-view,  on  its  nesting  stump  or  in  its  hollow 
log. 

Be  Yarrow  stream  unseen,  unknown! 

It  must,  or  we  shall  rue  it : 
We  have  a  vision  of  our  own  ; 

Ah  !  why  should  we  undo  it  ? 

I  understand.  Nevertheless,  I  wanted  to  find  a 
buzzard's  nest,  —  the  nest  of  the  Bear  Swamp  buz- 
zard ;  and  here  at  last  I  stood ;  and  yonder  on  the 
clouds,  a  mere  mote  in  the  distance,  floated  one  of 

191 


of  tfyt 

the  birds.  It  was  coming  toward  me  over  the  wide 
reach  of  the  swamp. 

Its  coming  seemed  perfectly  natural,  as  the  sight 
of  the  swamp  seemed  entirely  familiar,  though  I  had 
never  looked  upon  it  from  this  point  before.  Silent, 
inscrutable,  and  alien  it  lay,  untouched  by  human 
hands  except  for  this  narrow  braid  of  railroad  bind- 
ing its  outer  edges.  Over  it  hung  a  quiet  and  reserve 
as  real  as  twilight.  Like  a  mask  it  was  worn,  and  was 
slipped  on,  I  know,  at  my  approach.  I  could  feel  the 
silent  spirit  of  the  place  drawing  back  away  from 
me,  though  not  to  leave  me  quite  alone.  I  should 
have  at  least  a  guide  to  lead  me  through  the  shadow 
land,  for  out  of  the  lower  living  green  towered  a 
line  of  limbless  stubs,  their  bleached  bones  gleaming 
white,  or  showing  dark  and  gaunt  against  the  hori- 
zon and  marking  for  me  a  path  far  out  across  the 
swamp.  Besides,  here  came  the  buzzard  winding 
slowly  down  the  clouds.  Soon  its  spiral  changed  to 
a  long  pendulum  swing,  till  just  above  the  skeleton 
trees  it  wheeled,  and  bracing  itself  with  its  flapping 
wings,  dropped  heavily  upon  one  of  their  headless 
trunks. 

It  had  come  leisurely,  yet  with  a  defmiteness  that 
192 


of 

was  unmistakable  and  that  was  also  meaningful.  It 
had  discovered  me  in  the  distance,  and  while  still  in- 
visible to  my  eyes,  had  started  down  to  perch  upon 
that  giant  stub  in  order  to  watch  me.  Its  eye  had  told 
it  that  I  was  not  a  workman  upon  the  track,  nor  a 
traveler  between  stations.  If  there  was  a  purpose  to 
its  movements  that  suggested  just  one  thing  to  me, 
there  was  a  lack  of  purpose  in  mine  that  meant  many 
things  to  it.  It  was  suspicious,  and  had  come  because 
somewhere  beneath  its  perch  lay  a  hollow  log,  the 
creature's  den,  holding  the  two  eggs  or  young.  A 
buzzard  has  some  soul. 

Marking  the  direction  of  the  stub,  and  the  probable 
distance,  I  waded  into  the  deep  underbrush,  the  buz- 
zard for  my  guide,  and  for  my  quest  the  stump  or 
hollow  log  that  held  the  creature's  nest. 

The  rank  ferns  and  ropy  vines  swallowed  me  up, 
and  shut  out  at  times  even  the  sight  of  the  sky. 
Nothing  could  be  seen  of  the  buzzard.  Half  an 
hour's  struggle  left  me  climbing  a  pine-crested  swell 
in  the  low  bottom,  and  here  I  sighted  the  bird  again. 
It  had  not  moved. 

I  was  now  in  the  real  swamp,  the  old  uncut  forest. 
It  was  a  land  of  giants ;  huge  tulip  poplar  and  swamp 

193 


of  t§e 

white  oak,  so  old  that  they  had  become  solitary,  their 
comrades  having  fallen  one  by  one,  or  else,  unable  to 
loose  the  grip  upon  the  soil  that  had  widened  and 
tightened  through  centuries,  they  had  died  stand- 
ing. It  was  upon  one  of  these  that  the  buzzard  sat 
humped. 

Directly  in  my  path  stood  an  ancient  swamp  white 
oak,  the  greatest  tree,  I  think,  that  I  have  ever  seen. 
It  was  not  the  highest,  nor  the  largest  round,  per- 
haps, but  individually,  spiritually,  the  greatest.  Hoary, 
hollow,  and  broken-limbed,  its  huge  bole  seemed  en- 
circled with  the  centuries,  and  into  its  green  and 
grizzled  top  all  the  winds  of  heaven  had  some  time 
come. 

One  could  worship  in  the  presence  of  such  a  tree 
as  easily  as  in  the  shadow  of  a  vast  cathedral. 

For  it  had  bene  an  auncient  tree, 
Sacred  with  many  a  mysteree. 

Indeed,  what  is  there  built  with  hands  that  has  the 
dignity,  the  majesty,  the  divinity  of  life?  And  what 
life  was  here  !  Life  whose  beginnings  lay  so  far  back 
that  I  could  no  more  reckon  the  years  than  I  could 
count  the  atoms  it  had  builded  into  this  majestic 
form. 

194 


of 

Looking  down  upon  the  oak  from  twice  its  height 
loomed  a  tulip  poplar,  clean-boiled  for  thirty  feet,  and 
in  the  top  all  green  and  gold  with  blossoms.  It  was 
a  resplendent  thing  beside  the  oak,  yet  how  unmis- 
takably the  gnarled  old  monarch  wore  the  crown. 
Its  girth  more  than  balanced  the  poplar's  greater 
height,  and  as  for  blossoms,  Nature  knows  the  beauty 
of  strength  and  inward  majesty,  and  has  pinned  no 
boutonniere  upon  the  oak. 

My  buzzard  now  was  hardly  more  than  half  a  mile 
away,  and  plainly  seen  through  the  rifts  in  the  lofty 
timbered  roof  above  me.  As  I  was  nearing  the  top  of 
a  large  fallen  pine  that  lay  in  my  course,  I  was  startled 
by  the  burrh  !  burrh  !  burrh  !  of  three  partridges  tak- 
ing flight  just  beyond,  near  the  foot  of  the  tree.  Their 
exploding  seemed  all  the  more  real  when  three  little 
clouds  of  dust-smoke  rose  out  of  the  low,  wet  bottom 
and  drifted  up  against  the  green. 

Then  I  saw  an  interesting  sight.  In  falling,  the 
pine  with  its  wide-reaching,  multitudinous  roots  had 
snatched  at  the  shallow,  sandy  bottom  and  torn  out 
a  giant  fistful,  leaving  a  hole  about  two  feet  deep  and 
more  than  a  dozen  feet  wide.  The  sand  thus  lifted  into 
the  air  had  gradually  washed  down  into  a  mound  on 


of 

each  side  of  the  butt,  where  it  lay  high  and  dry  above 
the  level  of  the  swamp.  This  the  swamp  birds  had 
turned  into  a  great  dust-bath.  It  was  in  constant  use, 
surely,  for  not  a  spear  of  grass  had  sprouted  in  it,  and 
all  over  it  were  pits  and  craters  of  various  sizes,  show- 
ing that  not  only  the  partridges,  but  also  the  quails, 
and  such  small  things  as  the  warblers,  washed  here,  — 
though  I  can't  recall  ever  having  seen  a  warbler  bathe 
in  the  dust.  A  dry  bath  in  the  swamp  was  something 
of  a  luxury,  evidently.  I  wonder  if  the  buzzards  used 
it? 

I  went  forward  cautiously  now,  and  expectantly,  for 
I  was  close  enough  to  see  the  white  beak  and  red  wat- 
tled neck  of  my  guide.  It  saw  me,  too,  and  began  to 
twist  its  head  as  I  shifted,  and  to  twitch  its  wing  tips 
nervously.  Suddenly  its  long,  black  wings  opened, 
and  with  a  heavy  lurch  that  left  the  stub  rocking, 
it  dropped  and  was  soon  soaring  high  up  in  the 
blue. 

This  was  the  right  locality ;  now  where  should  I 
find  the  nest?  Apparently  I  was  to  have  no  further 
help  from  the  old  bird.  The  underbrush  was  so  thick 
that  I  could  see  hardly  farther  than  my  nose.  A  half- 
rotten  tree  trunk  lay  near,  the  top  end  resting  across 

196 


of 

the  backs  of  several  saplings  which  it  had  borne  down 
in  its  fall.  I  crept  up  on  this  for  a  look  around,  and 
almost  tumbled  off  at  finding  myself  staring  directly 
into  the  dark,  cavernous  hollow  of  an  immense  log 
lying  on  a  slight  rise  of  ground  a  few  feet  ahead  of 
me. 

It  was  a  yawning  hole,  which  at  a  glance  I  knew 
belonged  to  the  buzzard.  The  log,  a  mere  shell  of  a 
mighty  white  oak,  had  been  girdled  and  felled  with  an 
axe,  by  coon  hunters,  probably,  and  still  lay  with  one 
side  resting  upon  the  rim  of  the  stump.  As  I  stood 
looking,  something  white  stirred  vaguely  in  the  hole 
and  disappeared. 

Leaping  from  my  perch,  I  scrambled  forward  to  the 
mouth  of  the  hollow  and  was  greeted  with  hisses  from 
far  back  in  the  dark.  Then  came  a  thumping  of  bare 
feet,  more  hisses,  and  a  sound  of  snapping  beaks.  I 
had  found  my  buzzard's  nest. 

Hardly  that,  either,  for  there  was  not  a  feather, 
stick,  or  chip  as  evidence  of  a  nest.  The  eggs  had 
been  laid  upon  the  sloping  cavern  floor,  and  in  the 
course  of  their  incubation  must  have  rolled  clear 
down  to  the  opposite  end,  where  the  opening  was  so 
narrow  that  the  buzzard  could  not  have  brooded  them 

197 


until  she  had  rolled  them  back.  The  wonder  is  that 
they  ever  hatched. 

But  they  had,  and  what  they  hatched  was  another 
wonder.  It  was  a  right  instinct  which  led  the  mother 
to  seek  the  middle  of  the  Bear  Swamp  and  there  hide 
her  young  in  a  hollow  log.  My  sense  of  the  fitness 
of  things  should  have  equaled  hers,  certainly,  and 
I  should  have  allowed  her  the  privacy  of  the  swamp. 
It  was  unfair  of  me  and  rude.  Nature  never  intended 
a  young  buzzard  for  any  eye  but  its  mother's,  and 
she  hates  the  sight  of  it.  Elsewhere  I  have  told  of 
a  buzzard  that  devoured  her  eggs  at  the  approach 
of  an  enemy,  so  delicately  balanced  are  her  unnamable 
appetites  and  her  maternal  affections ! 

The  two  freaks  in  the  log  must  have  been  three 
weeks  old,  I  should  say,  the  larger  weighing  about 
four  pounds.  They  were  covered,  as  young  owls  are, 
with  deep,  snow-white  down,  out  of  which  protruded 
their  legs,  long,  black,  scaly,  snaky  legs.  They  stood 
braced  on  these,  their  receding  heads  drawn  back, 
their  shoulders  thrust  forward,  their  bodies  humped 
between  the  featherless  wings  like  challenging  tom- 
cats. 

In  order  to  examine  them,  I  crawled  into  the  den ;  — 
198 


of  t 

not  a  difficult  act,  for  the  opening  measured  four  feet 
and  a  half  at  the  mouth.  The  air  was  musty  inside, 
yet  surprisingly  free  from  odor.  The  floor  was  abso- 
lutely clean,  but  on  the  top  and  sides  of  the  cavity 
was  a  thick  coating  of  live  mosquitoes,  most  of  them 
gorged,  hanging  like  a  red-beaded  tapestry  over  the 
walls. 

I  had  taken  pains  that  the  flying  buzzard  should 
not  see  me  enter,  for  I  hoped  she  would  descend  to 
look  after  her  young.  But  she  would  take  no  chances 
with  herself.  I  sat  near  the  mouth  of  the  hollow, 
where  I  could  catch  the  fresh  breeze  that  pulled 
at  the  end,  and  where  I  had  a  view  of  a  far-away 
bit  of  sky.  Suddenly  across  this  field  of  blue,  as  you 
have  seen  an  infusorian  scud  across  the  field  of 
your  microscope,  there  swept  a  meteor  of  black,  — 
the  buzzard  !  and  evidently  in  that  instant  of  passage, 
at  a  distance  certainly  of  half  a  mile,  she  spied  me 
in  the  log. 

I  waited  more  than  an  hour  longer,  and  when  I 
tumbled  out  with  a  dozen  kinds  of  cramps,  the  ma- 
ternal creature  was  soaring  serenely  far  up  in  the 
clear,  cool  sky. 


XV 


SHE  loved  nature  —  from  a  veranda,  a  dog-cart,  the 
deck  of  a  vessel.  She  had  been  to  the  seashore  for 
a  whole  June,  the  next  June  to  the  mountains,  then 
a  June  to  an  inland  farm.  "  And  I  enjoyed  it  !  "  she 
exclaimed  ;  "  the  sky-blue,  I  mean,  the  sea-blue,  and 
the  green  of  the  hills.  But  as  for  seeing  fiddler  crabs 
and  chewinks  and  woodchucks  —  things  !  why,  I 
simply  did  n't.  In  fact,  I  believe  that  most  of  your 
fiddling  crabs  and  moralizing  stumps  and  philoso- 
phizing woodchucks  are  simply  the  creatures  of  a 
disordered  imagination." 

I  quite  agreed  as  to  the  fiddling  (some  of  it)  and 


200 


of 

the  philosophizing ;  I  disagreed,  however,  as  to  the 
reality  of  the  crabs  and  the  woodchucks ;  for  it  was 
not  the  attributes  and  powers  of  these  creatures  that 
she  really  disbelieved  in,  but  the  very  existence  of 
the  creatures  themselves,  —  along  her  seashore,  and 
upon  the  farm  that  she  visited. 

"As  for  fiddler  crabs  and  chewinks  and  wood- 
chucks —  things"  she  did  not  see  them.  Certainly 
not.  Yet  a  fiddler  crab  is  as  real  an  entity  as  a 
thousand-acre  marsh,  —  and  in  its  way  as  interesting. 
It  is  a  sorry  soul  that  looks  for  nothing  out  of  doors 
but  fiddler  crabs,  and  insists  upon  their  fiddling ;  that 
never  sees  the  sky-blue,  the  sea-blue,  and  the  green 
of  the  rolling  hills.  I  shall  never  forget  a  moonrise 
over  the  Maurice  River  marshes  that  I  witnessed 
one  night  in  early  June.  It  was  a  peculiarly  solemn 
sight,  and  one  of  the  profoundly  beautiful  experiences 
of  my  life,  there  in  the  wide,  weird  silence  of  the  half 
sea-land,  with  the  tide  at  flood.  Nor  shall  I  ever 
forget  two  or  three  of  the  stops  which  I  made  in  the 
marshes  that  day  to  watch  the  fiddler  crabs.  Nor 
shall  I  forget  how  they  fiddled.  For  fiddle  they  did, 
just  as  they  used  to  years  ago,  when  they  and  I  lived 
on  these  marshes  together. 

201 


of  i$ 

If  my  skeptic  found  no  fiddler  crabs  along  her  sea- 
shore, found  nothing  of  interest  smaller  and  more 
thing-like  than  color  and  fresh  air,  it  may  be  that 
she  did  not  understand  how  to  look  for  crabs  and 
things. 

To  go  to  the  seashore  for  one  June,  to  the  moun- 
tains for  a  second,  to  the  farm  for  a  third,  is  not  a 
good  way  to  study  the  out-of-doors.  A  better  way  is 
to  spend  all  three  Junes  at  this  shore  or  upon  this 
same  farm.  It  is  when  one  abides  upon  the  farm, 
indeed,  the  year  around,  through  several  Junes,  that 
one  discovers  the  woodchucks.  The  clover  is  too  high 
in  June.  As  one  of  twelve,  June  is  a  very  good 
month  to  be  out  of  doors ;  but  as  a  season  for  nature 
study,  —  no  single  month,  not  even  June,  is  satis- 
factory. 

It  takes  time  and  patience  and  close  watching  to 
discover  woodchucks.  This  means  a  limited  terri- 
tory ;  one  can  easily  have  too  much  ground  to  culti- 
vate. I  know  a  man  who  owns  five  hundred  acres  of 
Jersey  pine  barrens,  and  who  can  hardly  till  enough 
of  it  to  pay  taxes,  whereas  a  friend  of  mine  here  near 
Boston  is  quietly  getting  rich  on  three  acres  and  a 
half. 

202 


of  $t 

My  skeptic  had  too  many  acres.  She  went  to  the 
seashore  one  summer,  then  to  the  mountains,  then 
to  a  farm,  and  now  she  doubts  the  existence  of  crabs 
and  woodchucks.  Well  she  may.  She  might  almost 
doubt  the  reality  of  the  mountains  and  shore,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  farm.  One  can  scarcely  come  to  be- 
lieve in  a  mountain  in  the  course  of  a  mere  June. 
The  trouble  is  one  of  size.  As  well  try  to  make 
friends  with  a  crowded  street.  Crabs  and  woodchucks 
live  in  little  holes.  You  must  hunt  for  the  holes; 
you  must  wait  until  the  woodchucks  come  out. 

For  more  than  five  years  now  I  have  been  hunting 
holes  here  on  the  farm,  and  it  is  astonishing  the 
number  I  have  discovered.  I  doubt  if  driving  past 
you  would  see  anything  extraordinary  in  this  small 
farm  of  mine,  —  a  steep,  tree-grown  ridge,  with  a 
house  at  the  top,  a  patch  of  garden,  a  bit  of  meadow, 
a  piece  of  woods,  a  stream,  a  few  old  apple  trees,  a 
rather  sterile,  stony  field.  But  live  here  as  I  do,  mow 
and  dig  and  trim  and  chop  as  I  do,  know  all  the  paths, 
the  stumps,  the  stone  heaps,  the  tree  holes,  earth 
holes,  —  there  simply  is  no  end  of  holes,  and  they  are 

all  inhabited. 

By  actual   count   there   are  forty-six  woodchuck 
\)  203 


of  tfy 

holes  on  these  fourteen  acres.  Now  forty-six  wood- 
chuck  holes  are  a  good  many  holes,  but  I  have  been 
these  five  years  counting  them.  Only  two  of  them 
are  in  the  open,  and  visible  from  the  road.  Driving 
past,  I  say,  you  might  actually  think  I  had  no  wood- 
chucks  at  all ! 

You  should  stop  all  summer  and  milk  for  me  some 
morning.  Throughout  the  early  part  of  the  season  I 
had  left  the  kitchen  with  my  milk-pail  rather  late,  — 
a  little  after  five  o'clock.  One  morning  in  September 
I  stepped  out  of  the  door  a  little  before  five,  and 
there  in  the  clover  close  to  the  stoop  sat  a  fine  old 
woodchuck.  I  stood  still  and  watched  him.  He  was 
not  expecting  me  yet,  for  he  knew  my  comings  out 
and  goings  in.  He  was  up  to  his  eyes  in  the  clover, 
and  he  neither  saw  nor  heard  me. 

Here  about  the  kitchen  door  he  had  fed  since  the 
clover  started,  and  I  had  not  known  it.  He  had 
timed  his  breakfast  so  as  to  be  through  by  five 
o'clock,  —  before  I  came  out.  Had  I  been  a  boarder, 
with  no  cow  to  milk,  perhaps  I  never  should  have 
known  it.  But  after  that  morning  I  saw  him  fre- 
quently. I  took  pains  to  get  up  with  him.  Just  over 
the  edge  of  the  lawn,  about  five  feet  down  the  wooded 

204 


of 

slope,  was  his  burrow,  which  was  one  of  the  latest 
of  the  forty-six  holes  to  be  discovered. 

When  I  shall  have  been  milking  and  huckle- 
berrying  and  hen's  nesting  and  aimlessly  wandering 
over  these  fourteen  acres  for  five  years  more,  I  shall 
have  found,  it  may  be,  the  very  last  of  the  wood- 
chuck  holes.  No,  not  in  five,  nor  in  five  hundred 
years,  for  the  families  in  the  old  holes  keep  multi- 
plying, and  the  new  holes  keep  multiplying  too. 

But  woodchucks  are  not  the  only  "  things,"  not  the 
only  crop  that  the  farm  yields,  although  it  must  cer- 
tainly seem  that  there  can  be  little  room  on  these 
scant  acres  for  anything  more.  My  farming,  how- 
ever, is  intensive, — from  the  tops  of  my  tallest  pines 
to  the  bottoms  of  my  deepest  woodchuck  burrows,  — 
so  that  I  have  an  abundant  crop  of  crows,  chip- 
munks, muskrats,  mice,  skunks,  foxes,  and  rabbits 
(few  rabbits,  I  ought  to  say,  because  of  the  many 
foxes). 

Lately  I  found  a  den  of  young  foxes  within  bark- 
ing distance  of  the  house,  but  along  a  stony  ridge 
on  the  adjoining  farm.  No  one  would  believe  in 
the  number  of  foxes  (or  the  number  of  times  I  have 
counted  the  same  fox)  here  on  the  farm,  and  this 

205 


of  tty 

only  sixteen  miles  by  the  roundabout  road  from  Bos- 
ton Common!  But  let  him  live  here  —  and  keep 
chickens ! 

One  day,  as  we  were  sitting  down  to  a  noon 
dinner,  I  heard  the  hens  squawk,  and  out  I  tore. 
The  fox  had  a  big  black  hen  and  was  making  off  for 
the  woods.  I  made  after  the  fox.  There  is  a  sharp 
ridge  back  of  the  henyard,  which  was  thickly  cov- 
ered with  stump  sprouts  and  slashings.  The  fox  took 
to  the  ridge.  From  the  house  to  the  henyard  it  is 
all  downhill,  and  I  wanted  that  hen.  She  weighed  a 
good  eight  pounds,  —  a  load  for  any  fox, — and  what 
with  her  squawking  and  flopping,  the  tangle  of  brush 
and  the  steep  hillside,  it  is  small  wonder  that  just 
short  of  the  top  I  fell  upon  her,  to  the  great  sorrow 
of  the  fox,  who  held  on  until  I  was  within  reach  of  him. 

But  such  an  experience  as  this,  while  it  would  be 
quite  impossible  to  a  summer  boarder,  is  yet  a  not 
uncommon  experience  for  my  unobserving,  fox-hating 
neighbors.  They  seldom  see  more,  however ;  whereas, 
a  study  of  the  lay  of  the  land  hereabout  reveals  a 
real  fox  community  overlying  our  farm  community 
like  some  faint  tracing.  We  humans  possess  the  land 
by  day  and  the  foxes  keep  to  their  dens;  the  foxes 

206 


of 

possess  the  land  at  night  and  we  humans  take  to  our 
dens. 

One  of  the  high  roads  of  the  foxes  runs  across  the 
farm.  Foxes,  like  men,  are  more  or  less  mechanical 
in  their  coming  and  going.  They  will  move  within 
certain  well-defined  boundaries,  running  certain  defi- 
nite routes ;  crossing  the  stream  at  a  particular  ford 
every  time,  traveling  this  ridge  and  not  that,  leaving 
the  road  at  this  point,  and  swinging  off  in  just  such 
a  circle  through  the  swamp. 

One  autumn  two  foxes  were  shot  at  my  lower  bars 
as  they  were  jumping  the  little  river.  Their  road 
crosses  the  stream  here,  then  leads  through  the 
bars,  along  the  base  of  the  ridge,  and  up  my  path  to 
the  pasture. 

I  stood  in  this  path  one  night  when  a  fox  that 
the  dogs  were  driving  came  up  behind  me,  stopped, 
and  sniffed  at  my  boots.  This  last  November,  1907, 
a  young  fox,  leaving  the  hounds  in  the  tangle  of 
his  trails,  trotted  up  this  same  path,  turned  in  the 
pasture,  and  came  up  to  the  house.  He  halted  -on 
the  edge  of  the  lawn  just  above  the  woodchuck  hole 
that  I  mentioned  a  few  pages  back,  and  for  full  ten 
minutes  sat  there  in  the  moonlight  yapping  back  at 

207 


of 

the  shepherd  dog  barking  at  him  from  my  neigh- 
bor's yard  below. 

This  run  up  the  ridge  to  the  pasture  is  the  high- 
way from  west  to  east.  When  the  pack  is  baying  off 
to  the  eastward,  and  coming  nearer,  I  can  stand  by 
the  fence  between  the  yard  and  my  neighbor's  pasture 
with  the  certainty  of  seeing  the  fox  once  in  half  a 
dozen  times,  and  the  dogs  almost  every  time,  for  the 
fox  breaks  from  the  sprout  land  back  of  the  henyard, 
crosses  the  neighboring  pasture,  jumps  the  wall,  and 
runs  my  driveway  to  the  public  road  and  on  to  the 
woods  beyond  the  river. 

All  of  this  sounds  very  wild,  indeed,  and  so  it  is  — 
at  night ;  in  the  daylight  it  is  all  tame  enough.  Only 
the  patient  watcher  knows  what  wild  feet  run  these 
open  roads ;  only  he  who  knows  the  lay  of  every 
foot  of  this  rocky,  pastured  land  knows  that  these 
winding  cow  paths  lead  past  the  barnyards  on  into 
the  ledges  and  into  dens.  And  no  one  can  find  all  of 
this  out  in  a  single  June. 

Many  of  our  happiest  glimpses  of  nature  are  ac- 
cidental. We  stumble  upon  things,  yet  it  happens 
usually  when  we  are  trying  to  find  something.  The 
finding  of  a  hummingbird's  nest  is  always  an  acci- 

208 


of  tty 

dent ;  and  such  accidents  are  extremely  rare,  as  will 
be  seen  from  a  statement  by  Mr.  Burroughs  in  which 
he  says  he  has  come  upon  but  three  hummingbirds' 
nests  in  all  his  life !  He  has  doubtless  found  many 
more  than  three  owls'  nests,  but  perhaps  not  one 
of  such  finds  was  an  accident.  He  hunted  for  the 
owls. 

Night  after  night,  in  the  sweet  silence  through 
which  our  little  river  sings,  we  hear  the  whimpering 
of  the  small  screech  owls.  They  are  beating  for  mice 
and  frogs  over  the  meadow.  So  much  we  get  without 
watching ;  but  the  sight  of  them  and  their  nest,  that 
came  only  with  my  visiting  every  tree  in  the  neigh- 
borhood having  a  cavity  big  enough  to  hold  the  birds. 

At  twilight,  in  the  late  spring  and  early  summer, 
we  frequently  hear  a  gentle,  tremulous  call  from  the 
woods,  or  from  below  in  the  orchard.  "  What  is  it?" 
I  had  been  asked  a  hundred  times,  and  as  many  times 
had  answered  that  it  sounded  like  the  hen  partridge 
clucking  to  her  brood;  or  that  it  made  me  think 
of  the  mate-call  of  a  coon  ;  or  that  I  half  inclined  to 
believe  it  the  cry  of  the  woodchucks ;  or  that  pos- 
sibly it  might  be  made  by  the  owls.  In  fact,  I  did  n't 
know  the  peculiar  call,  and  year  after  year  I  kept 

209 


of  t$ 

waiting  for  an  accident  to  reveal  its  maker  and  its 
meaning  to  me. 

There  were  accidents  and  discoveries  of  many 
sorts  during  these  years,  but  not  this  particular  acci- 
dent. The  accident  you  wait  for  is  slow  in  coming. 

We  were  seated  one  evening  on  the  porch  listen- 
ing to  the  whip-poor-wills,  when  some  one  said, 
"There's  your  woodchuck  singing  again."  Sure 
enough,  there  sounded  the  tremulous  woodchtick- 
part ridge-coon-owl  cry,  and  I  slipped  down  through 
the  birches  determined  to  know  that  cry  if  I  had  to 
follow  it  all  night. 

The  moon  was  high  and  full,  the  footing  almost  noise- 
less, and  everything  so  quiet  that  I  quickly  located 
the  clucking  sounds  as  coming  from  the  orchard.  I 
came  out  of  the  birches  into  the  wood  road,  and  was 
crossing  the  open  field  to  the  orchard,  when  some- 
thing dropped  with  a  swish  and  a  vicious  clacking 
almost  upon  my  head.  I  jumped  from  under,  —  I 
should  say  a  part  of  my  hair, — and  saw  a  screech 
owl  swoop  softly  up  into  the  nearest  apple  tree.  In- 
stantly she  turned  toward  me  and  uttered  the  gentle 
purring  cluck  that  I  had  been  guessing  so  hard  at  for 
at  least  three  years.  And  even  while  I  looked  at  her 

210 


of 

I  saw  in  the  tree  beyond,  silhouetted  against  the 
moonlit  sky,  two  round  bunches,  —  young  owls  evi- 
dently,—  which  were  the  interpretation  of  the  calls. 
These  two,  and  another  young  one,  were  found  in 
the  orchard  the  following  day. 

I  rejoined  the  guessers  on  the  porch,  and  gave 
them  the  satisfying  facts.  But  let  me  say  that  this 
was  very  fast,  even  exceptional  time,  indeed,  for  the 
solving  of  an  outdoor  problem.  I  have  questions 
enough  for  a  big  chapter  upon  which  I  have  been 
working  these  more  than  three  years.  The  point  is 
this :  I  might  have  gone  on  guessing  about  the 
mother  call  of  the  screech  owl  to  the  end  of  time; 
whereas  with  a  little  searching  and  I  must  certainly 
have  found  out  the  cry  in  much  less  time  than  three 
years. 

I  had  laughed  at  some  good  friends  over  on  the 
other  road  who  had  bolted  their  front  door  and  had 
gone  out  of  the  door  at  the  side  of  the  house  for 
precisely  twenty-one  years  because  the  key  in  the 
front  door  lock  would  n't  work.  They  kept  intending 
to  have  it  fixed,  but  the  children  were  little  and  kept 
them  busy;  then  they  grew  up,  and  of  course  kept  them 
busy  ;  got  married  at  last  and  left  home, —  all  but 

211 


of 

one  daughter.  Still  the  locksmith  was  not  called  to  fix 
the  front  door.  One  day  this  unmarried  daughter,  in 
a  fit  of  dire  impatience,  got  at  the  door  herself,  and 
found  that  the  key  had  been  inserted  just  twenty-one 
years  before  —  upside  down! 

So  I  had  sat  on  the  porch  and  guessed  about  it.  I 
had  left  the  key  upside  down  in  the  lock  of  the  front 
door,  and  had  gone  out  by  way  of  the  kitchen. 

The  first  necessity  for  interesting  nature  study  is  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  some  locality.  It  does  not 
matter  how  small,  how  commonplace,  how  near  the 
city,  — the  nearer  the  better,  provided  there  are  trees, 
water,  fences,  and  some  seclusion.  If  your  own  roof- 
tree  stands  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  then  that  is  ideal. 

But  you  must  be  limited.  It  is  a  small  amount  of 
land  that  one  man  can  till  with  profit.  Your  very 
bees  range  hardly  more  than  two  miles  from  the 
hive.  They  cannot  fly  farther  than  that  and  store 
honey.  Within  this  little  world,  however,  they  know 
every  bank  whereon  the  honey-yielding  flowers  grow. 
In  early  August  I  can  follow  their  line  of  flight 
westward,  through  the  woods  for  more  than  a  mile, 
to  an  old  pasture  where  great  patches  of  dwarf  sumac 
are  in  bloom.  The  bees  hum  about  me  in  a  fever 

212 


of 

of  excitement.  Then  I  fetch  a  compass  far  around 
toward  home,  and  wherever  I  find  the  sumac  in 
blossom,  whether  a  hundred  clustered  bushes,  or  a 
single  panicle  of  flowers  hidden  deep  in  the  woods, 
there  I  find  my  golden  bees.  I  wonder  if,  in  all  their 
range,  they  let  waste  one  drop  of  this  heavy  golden 
sumac  honey  ? 

Do  you  know  the  flowers  in  your  range  as  well  as 
the  bees  know  them  in  theirs  ?  And,  what  is  more, 
are  you  getting  the  honey  ?  Do  you  know  your  dead 
trees  and  stone  piles,  and  the  folk  who  dwell  in  them  ? 
Could  you  take  me,  silent  and  soft  of  foot,  from  hole 
to  hole,  from  nest  to  nest,  from  hedgerow  to  thicket, 
to  cripple,  to  meadow,  making  me  acquainted  with 
your  neighbors  ? 

This  is  what  Gilbert  White  could  have  done  had 
you  visited  him  at  Selborne.  This  is  what  John 
Burroughs  still  does  when  the  college  girls  go  out 
to  Slabsides. 

Owning  a  farm  is  not  necessary  for  all  of  this. 
Only  the  parish  house  and  the  yard  belonged  to  the 
old  naturalist  of  Selborne.  Sometimes,  indeed,  I  am 
quite  convinced  that,  for  pure  and  lasting  joy  in  the 
fields,  you  should  not  be  possessed  even  of  a  garden 

213 


of 

patch  ;  for,  once  you  have  digged  into  earth  of  your 
own,  then  have  a  care,  else  along  with  the  cucumber 
seed  you  will  plant  your  soul.  The  man  in  the  Scrip- 
tures who  bought  a  piece  of  land  and  wished  there- 
after only  to  dig,  had  a  real  case. 

Owning  a  farm  is  not  necessary.  To  be  near  the 
open  country  is  enough,  so  near  that  you  can  know 
it  intimately  the  year  around.  "  He  is  a  thoroughly 
good  naturalist,"  says  Kingsley,  "who  knows  his 
own  parish  thoroughly."  He  was  thinking  of  Gilbert 
White,  I  am  sure,  —  that  gentle  rector  who  lived  in 
Selborne,  and  there  grew  old  with  his  tortoise. 

This  is  all  there  is  to  nature  study,  this  growing 
old  with  your  garden  and  your  tame  tortoise.  The 
study  of  the  out-of-doors  is  not  a  new  cult ;  it  is  not 
a  search  after  a  living  uintatherium,  or  after  a  frog 
that  can  swallow  his  pond,  or  a  fish  hawk  that  reads, 
—  not  a  hunt  for  the  extraordinary  or  the  marvelous 
at  all,  but  for  things  as  the  Lord  made  them.  Nature 
study  is  the  out-of-door  side  of  natural  history,  the 
unmeasured,  unprinted  side  of  poetry.  It  is  joy  in 
breathing  the  air  of  the  fields ;  joy  in  seeing,  hear- 
ing, living  the  life  of  the  fields ;  joy  in  knowing  and 
loving  all  that  lives  with  you  in  your  out-of-doors. 


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